Kyrgyzstan: Residents fear toxic chemicals stored at disused plant are leaking into local environment
In Kyrgyzstan’s ‘graveyard of factories’ locals fear chemical time bomb, 28 October 2022
... For more than two decades, 80 tons of dangerous chemicals have sat in disused Kristall, which once transformed volatile compounds into materials for semiconductors and was slated to become one of the biggest plants in the world of its type. In the age of microchips and solar panels, its output would have been in high demand.
Instead, neglected and ignored by the government, residents fear these corrosive chemicals are now slowly leaking out into the local environment, spelling ecological catastrophe for both the city and the wider region, including the populous Fergana Valley below...
The site is now owned by Computer Power Center LLC, a company registered in Kyrgyzstan 2019.
Its director, Maksat Oskonbayev, confirmed that it now hosts a crypto mining farm, although he claimed that the rigs aren’t currently running...
During a meeting in Tash-Kumyr, Oskonbayev claimed that he is not allowed to access the territory and that the large vats of chemicals are not the company’s responsibility since they are owned by a separate firm called Tash-Kömür Silicon Production CJSC (TSP), from whom Computer Power Center LLC acquired the land and building three years ago...
Computer Power Center LLC is Chinese-owned, Oskonbayev said, without providing details.
The shifting of responsibility for the chemicals has been a pattern at the plant, which has mostly stood idle after being prepped for privatization in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in the early 1990s...
Tash-Kumyr’s new mayor, Kelsinbek Bektemirov told Eurasianet that local authorities are ready to get involved in the waste disposal effort if funds are forthcoming.
During an interview in his office, both Bektemirov and his deputy cast doubt on the crypto mining firm’s claim that the chemicals in the tanks are still the responsibility of TSP [...] that was nationalized.
Computer Power Center LLC agreed to take on all assets when they concluded the deal, the officials have said...