Results of the research on tailings storage facilities in the Dniester River Basin

On January 22, 2019 a workshop on current state of tailings storage facilities and their potential impact on the the Dniester River Basin was held in Kyiv.

Representatives of the Ministry of Ecology  and Natural Resources of Ukraine, State Agency of Water Resources of Ukraine, the Dniester Basin Authorities, Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast State Administrations, enterprises who  tailings storage facilities, the Ministry of Agriculture, Regional Development and Environment of the Republic of Moldova and Apele Moldovei.

According to the presented study, 25 objects are located in the basin, where more than 160 million cubic meters of industrial waste are stored. . A level of technical condition and operation of many objects is defined as unsatisfactory or critical, and requires urgent measures. The workshop participants supported a need to adapt national legal framework to the requirements of European legislation on industrial waste, and expressed their readiness to continue work on improving management of such potentially dangerous facilities.

Identification and inventory of tailings storage facilities in the Dniester River basin, and the event were organized within the framework of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) project “Enabling transboundary cooperation and integrated water resources management in the Dniester River Basin”. The project is implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in co-operation with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).