The company responsible for the Tampere waste processing facility where a fire caused the evacuation of 350 people on Monday had previously received a citation for breaching the terms of its environmental permit.
Last March the Pirkanmaa Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment (ELY Centre) urged the operator of the facility, environmental management firm Delete, to remove a heap of recycling fuel raw material that was on the compound. It also slapped the company with a penalty payment for the infraction. However the company appealed the fine in the local administrative court.
However, the pile which garnered the fine was not the same as the pile of construction waste that caught fire on Monday.
Delete business director Henri Pesonen said that one of conditions of the permit for operating the facility was that the company had to build warehouses at the compound. While the previous permit allowed it to store recycled fuel raw materials outdoors, the new one outlined in the administrative court ruling did not.
"We didn't know what the contents of the new permit would be after the appeal to the administrative court. That's why we didn't start construction. We began the construction project after receiving the permit," Pesonen explained.
The administrative court decision that Pesonen was referring to was handed down in November 2017. He said that the recycled fuel raw material will be transferred to indoor storage in a few weeks once the final covered facility is completed.
ELY Centre inspects facility
Meanwhile the fire that raged on Monday caused the evacuation of hundreds who were not able to return to their homes until evening. Police have said that they do not suspect any foul play at this stage.
The ELY Centre has said that it has no information about whether or not the pile of waste that caught fire on Monday was allowed to be there. Delete has said that the fire may have started due to a lithium battery that ended up in the heap by accident.
On Tuesday afternoon, an ELY Centre inspector visited the site to determine the cause of the fire and the possible events that may have led up to it.
"We also went through procedures to be able to prevent fires in future and how practices should change," senior inspector Emmi Pajunen said.
Ongoing talks about waste facility
Tampere city environmental authorities as well as ELY Centre and company officials will have discussions to decide on whether or not the facility can continue operations in their present form.
"I cannot comment on that at the moment," Pajunen said. She added that she was supposed to visit the compound next week to see whether or not the firm had brought the waste situation under control. However the fire advanced her plans.
The ELY Centre has also been looking into complaints about dust and odours emanating from the Rusko waste processing plant. The grievances have been filed by nearby residents and Tampere environmental officials.
In a previous interview with Yle, Delete's Pesonen had said that the burning pile of waste contained cast-off metals and packing material. The plant's environmental permit requires different kinds of waste to be stored separately.
"The sections always contain some contamination. This was primarily metal waste. I used the term 'packaging material' to describe what was really burning as well as possible," he noted.
He said that the ELY Centre will determine whether or not the mixed materials violated the terms of the permit.