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December 8, 2010
Public meeting in the Alcoa Fjardaál smelter
Alcoa Fjardaál invited the residents of Fjardabyggd and surrounding communities to an open, public meeting in the Fjardaál smelter yesterday. More than thirty guests attended the meeting, which is an annual event, where the company presents information about its operations and welcomes enquiries from members of the community.
The presentations revealed that emissions from the smelter in Reydarfjordur are within the limits set by the company’s Environmental Operation Permit (EOP). They also revealed that all byproducts from the production are transported to other countries for recycling and only 0.4% of waste from the smelter goes to landfills.
Presenters discussed the immense revelance of HSA, the Hospital of East-Iceland in Neskaupstadur, for Fjardaál’s operations. The government has, in the national budget, assumed to cut its operations by 8%, which will have considerable effect on the safety and living conditions of Fjardaál’s employees and contractors that work for the company.
Tómas Már Sigurdsson, Director of Alcoa Iceland, presented current highlights in the company’s operations, for instance the construction of a 4000 m2 pot lining facility at the smelter site, which will create more than one hundred jobs during the construction phase and dozens of future jobs. He also discussed the Planning Agency’s recently published review of the joint Environmental Impact Assessment for the intended Bakki smelter and the accompanying power plants and transmission lines, and said that many questions pertaining to this project remain unanswered, such as the availability of power and the power price.
Tómas also presented the main issues covered by the University of Akureyri’s recently published report on the socio-economic impact of the Kárahnjúkar project and the smelter in Reydarfjordur in the period 2002-2009. According to the report, the population of central East-Iceland increased by 22% in this period while the population in all of East-Iceland increased by over 5%. Tómas said that the report reveals that 83 billion ISK streamed into the Icelandic economy during the construction period. At the same time, total investment in the Icelandic economy amounted to 1,500 billion ISK and private consumption increased by 40%. It is therefore clear that the two projects were not the main cause for the overheat of the Icelandic economy, leading up to the crash in 2008.
Magnús Helgason, Managing Director of Launafl – one of the largest contractors working for Alcoa Fjardaál – stated how important the smelter is for the development of other industries in the area: over 1000 jobs have been created, the population has increased and the level of services has been significantly raised. Launafl was established by a few small companies in East-Iceland, which merged in order to offer a range of services for the smelter. Magnús said that if not for the smelter, there would be stagnation in the surrounding communities.
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