Ecology, Energy, Estonia, Legislation

An application for permission to obtain oil shale from the ground in the Jouga landscape protection area was filed by AS Eesti Polevkivi, predecessor of Eesti Energia Kaevandused AS.

In a letter to the Environmental Board, Eesti Energia board member Margus Vals said the ban demonstrates that in the decisions of the Environmental Board nature conservation interests take unproportional precedence over other interests.

Vals also said that if the Environmental Board bans mineral extraction in the Jouga landscape protection area, this doesn't mean that one cannot mine there at all.

"We continue to emphasize that we consider it possible to interprete the Nature Conservation Act in such way that activities which are not permitted in the protected area may be protected above or underneath the protected area." the letter says.

Eesti Energia pointed out that no restrictions have been imposed on extraction activity 60 meters below the protected area. Moreover, the protected area management plan never even makes mention of a mine and the environmental impact it entails, and the owner of the extraction permit is not even treated as an interested party in it, Vals said.

Maret Vildak, lead environmental protection specialist at the Environmental Board, said in her response to Vals that the oil shale stock situated in the territory of the Jouga landscape protection area has been categorized as passive, meaning that mining is not permitted.

Vildak observed that extraction and use of oil shale have a significant environmental impact on the landscape, soil, fauna, surface water and groundwater, and ambient air. Besides, there have been cases where bodies of surface water have partially or completely dried up after the end of mineral extraction.

Consequently, the position of the Environmental Board is that a negative impact on the Jouga protected area cannot be ruled out. "The Environmental Board has received no additional materials based on which the Environmental Board could review its stance," the official said.

In 2003, the Department of Mining of the Tallinn University of Technology estimated the Kivinomme landscape protection area, which is how the protected area was called at the time, to hold more than 10 million tons of oil shale.