The tiny waterfront town of Kvalsund, whose leaders approved a copper mine in 2019, has become an unlikely locus of national tension
At six o’clock on an August morning in the Norwegian Arctic, Einar Juliussen opens his eyes to a noon-bright summer sun filling his cramped boat cabin. He rolls over and shakes his 15-year-old son, Arvid, awake. Within an hour, with Arvid at the wheel, they’re speeding away from the dock and over the flashing waves of the Repparfjord in search of king crabs.
“No to dumping, give the fjord love,” says a banner at the entrance to the protest camp. Starting in June 2021, people of all ages from all over the country gathered in the camp to protest the mine. In the background is the future deposit site.“COPPER. NICKEL. ZINC. LEAD. CADMIUM. MERCURY”—the words, scrawled in black marker on white poster board nailed to a post, mark the entrance to the protest site.
Instead, the company plans to run a pipe from its onshore processing facility 200 feet down to the fjord’s bed. It is allowed to pump two million tons annually and cover an estimated five square miles, or about 15 percent, of the fjord’s bottom. To keep the waste contained to this area, the company will use a flocculant, a chemical that binds particles together.
Young activists from the protest camp take a morning dip in the cold water in Repparfjorden. From the left Maja Angeltveit, 19, Åsa braut Bache, 23 , Jørgen Næss Karlsen, 24, , Kajsa Haabt Kleivane, 21, and Kristina Moe-Karlsen, 24 .“We engage many experts to ensure a sense of security that the deposit site will not be disrupted, that the technology is there so that the particles will not spread,” Sørby says.
The sediment at the Folldal Verk dump site remains toxic 40 years later, and according to the 2016 study, the tiny, copper-rich tailings particles get absorbed by plankton, small crustaceans, and marine worms that eat it. Because king crabs and larval and young cod and salmon depend on such bottom feeders for food, van der Meeren says, this toxic environment may contribute to the fjord’s diminished fish stocks to this day.
Every May, Per Johnny and Eli ride ATVs behind their 500-strong reindeer herd west over the mountains to Kvalsund from their winter pastures in Karasjok, 120 miles away. On the way they camp in a lavvo, a Sámi teepee, for weeks until they reach their summer home on the Repparfjord, where the reindeer calve. The sea Sámi welcome them; for centuries, trade and intermarriage between the communities have thrived.
But Per Johnny Skum is: He points to the snout-shaped tip of the copper-rich mountain that Nussir will mine, which he can see from the window. “Nussir is a Sámi word, meaning nose,” he says. “They stole our mountain and our word.”Sixty miles away, a screen projects a different view of the Nussir mountain range: layered topographical prints crisscrossed with red lines.
“This idea of leaving the metals in the ground doesn’t work,” he says. “Then all of our hopes for handling the climate crisis are obviously lost and gone.” Rushfeldt isn’t worried that demand for copper will decline. More than a decade into the project, with government approvals so far on his side, he’s ready to wait out one more delay.When there is no more hope
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