Global steel giant ArcelorMittal is failing to meet minimum environmental standards at its massive plant in central Bosnia, a Guardian Cities investigation has learned.
The vast Zenica steelworks is operating without valid permits and a number of pledged improvements to reduce emissions from the factory have not been made.
When Lakshmi Mittal bought the Zenica plant in 2004, the Indian billionaire promised to make “all appropriate investment in the protection of the environment”. But a decade on, much of this work has not been completed. Bosnia suffers from some of the world’s highest levels of air pollution, with Zenica among the worst affected.
Most winter days, the sky over Šahiza Šehić’s house is filled with plumes of acrid black smoke. Šehić, who is now retired, lives in the shadow of the steelworks, where she worked all her life.
As she speaks, a huge cloud of thick dust drifts overhead. ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker and owner of this Željezara plant, has thus far failed to deliver on promises to reduce pollution from the steelworks’ vertiginous chimneys and smokestacks.
“Sometimes there is so much dust you cannot believe it,” Šehić says as she shuffles around her garden, which backs directly on to the factory perimeter fence. Regimented rows of plums, peaches, pears and strawberries are covered in a thin film of grey ash. “In addition there is some kind of glittery dust,” she says. “Sometimes I even find it inside my house. I bring it in on my shoes.”
Smail Sivić lives a few doors down. On sunny days, Sivić and his wife used to drink coffee in their backyard. “Now if you are outside for 10 minutes, everything changes and turns into black,” he says. “Like somebody has sprinkled black pepper. It is killing us.”
Zenica is a city of around 100,000 dominated by steel. The local football team is named Čelik – “steelmaking”. The prevailing wind often carries carries fat reels of smoke and dust from the towering blast furnaces and needle-thin chimneys that puncture the skyline. On a bad day, even drawing a breath can be a struggle.
Downtown, electronic displays erected atop the slate-grey communist-era apartment blocks measure the amount of sulphur dioxide (SO2) in the air. In 2015, levels of this toxic gas – which comes from burning coal – exceeded EU safe limits 166 times. Locals have frequently protested ArcelorMittal’s failure to introduce environmental improvements that were pledged when the steel giant bought the plant over a decade ago.
Source: The Guardian