Small Agency, Big Mines: Who Watches the Sary-Bulak Tailings?

Below the Sary-Bulak workings, the stream that waters three villages runs orange after rain. Samples taken by a Talas State University field team last autumn found arsenic at four times, and antimony at six times, the ISEZ’s limits for irrigation water at two of their five points.

The body responsible for policing the antimony industry’s waste is the Chatkal Placer Mining Inspectorate. Its annual report for 2020 lists eleven inspectors, two vehicles and a budget of 2.1 million som. In the same year the combine paid 2.6 million som in environmental fines, the largest of which was for a tailings spill in 2019.

The inspectorate says its readings at its main monitoring points have been within limits since the late 2010s. Its main monitoring points, according to its own map, are upstream of the two villages where the university found the highest levels.

“We measure where we can drive”

An inspector, who asked not to be named because staff are not allowed to speak to the press, said the monitoring points were chosen “where we can drive in winter”. “Below the dam there is no road,” he said.

The combine is one of the largest taxpayers in the ISEZ. The inspectorate is funded from the budget of the Ministry of Natural Resources, which also sits on the combine’s supervisory board. The ministry said the inspectorate’s resources were “adequate to its mandate”. The combine said it had installed scrubbers at Chatkal and that its tailings were “managed to international standards”.

A woman in Kara-Suu village, whose family has farmed the stream bank for three generations, said her apricot trees had stopped bearing in 2016. “No one comes to measure our water,” she said. “Students came once.”