Karabash

Karabash is a city in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. The administrative center of the Karabash city district. The population is 10,756 people (2020).

By Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 1398-r dated July 29, 2014 "On approval of the list of single-industry towns", the Karabash city District is included in the category of "Single-industry municipalities of the Russian Federation (single-industry towns) with the most difficult socio-economic situation".

A brief history

The word "karabash" comes from Turkic and means "black head" or "black top". Perhaps the mountain was so named because of the dark rocks on its top.

The history of the city begins in the XIX century. In 1822, a settlement was formed in the Soymanov Valley, where gold miners worked. In the floodplain of the Sak-Elga River, they washed gold. Later, copper ore deposits were discovered in the river valley.

By 1837, a copper smelter was built here. It lasted only five years. Then, already in 1907, another copper smelting plant was built here, and it was bought by an English mining company. This plant has worked for only three years.

The third plant was opened in 1910. There was the best equipment at that time, two furnaces processed up to 30 thousand pounds of ore per day. The third furnace, launched in 1912, allowed to increase the processing capacity to 8,000 tons of rough copper per year.

By 1915, one third of all Russian copper was produced here.

During the Civil War, both ore mining and copper smelting stopped. Work resumed by 1925, while by 1935 production had tripled compared to what it was before the revolution.

Karabash was granted the status of a city in 1933, and by the end of the 1930s the number of inhabitants reached a historical maximum: 38 thousand people. So the city came to the time of the Great Patriotic War. Five thousand people went to the front, and women and teenagers went to the mine and the factory. They forged the "metal of victory":

Alloys based on copper and tin were used for the production of artillery guns and mortars. The workshops of the plant produced, among other things, blanks of shells for the famous "Katyusha".

An alloy of copper and zinc (brass) was used for the production of shell casings and cartridges.

Copper was needed for ammunition and batteries for submarines and for tank assemblies.

Copper went to the communication lines, radio equipment.

In 1941, people were evacuated to Karabash from Leningrad, which was taken under siege. And after the war, the city began to grow – gas was brought to it, the Kialim reservoir was put into operation, new residential buildings were built. But the population still fell to 24,000 by 1959: the problem was that in the 1950s the mines were closed here.

Geography

KARABASH, a city of regional subordination. The territory of 68.6 thousand hectares (including: agricultural lands - 2.8 thousand hectares, forest lands - 56.7 thousand hectares, lands of specially protected areas - 95.0 hectares, lands of industry, transport, communications and other purposes - 4185.0 hectares). The population is 16.1 thousand people (2001). In the administrative territory, except for the city of regional subordination, there are 9 settlements: the villages of Baidashevo, Burlak, Karasevo, Kialim, Krasny Kamen, Maly Agardyash, Mukhametovo, Saktayevo, a 30 km detour. The city of Karabash is located in the northwestern part of the Chelyabinsk region on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains, in the breakup of the mountains bordering the Soymanov Valley, on the watershed of the Atkus and Sak-Elga rivers flowing into the Miass River. The administrative territory of Karabash is bordered on the north by the territory of Kyshtym, on the northwest by the territory of Nyazepetrovsky district, on the west by the territory of Kusinsky district, on the southwest by the territory of Zlatoust, on the south by the territory of Miass, on the east by the territory of Argayash district. The city is located among mountains, forests, lakes. The highest point of the mountain ranges surrounding the city is Mount Jurma (Bolshoy Taganay ridge) with a height of 1023.5 m above sea level, standing 12 km to the west from Karabash. The Golden Mountain with a height of 597.2 m above sea level dominates the city itself from the east, and Mount Karabash with a height of 430.6 m from the west. According to legend, the name of the city is associated with the name of this low mountain, at the base of which in 1909 it was decided to build a copper smelter. Covered with placers of dark-colored stones, cone-shaped, it resembles a pointed Bashkir hat or a black human head. The word Karabash in translation from Bashkir means "black head". The real adornment of the surroundings of Karabash are lakes: Bolshoy and Maly Agardyash, Bolshye and Malye Barny, Anashka, Alabuga, Yushty, Arashkul, Ufa, Serebry, Argazi, Bogorodskoye, the blue pearl of the Urals - Lake Uvildy, as well as the Bolshoy Kialim, Sak-Elga and Atkus rivers, which flow into the Miass River. The general character of these rivers is mountainous, with sharp fluctuations in the level depending on the amount of precipitation. The following lakes are officially recognized as unique natural monuments: Ufa and Silver Lakes, the Bolshoy Kialim River and the Kialim reservoir, Onion Meadow, Lake Uvildy (14 km long and up to 40 m deep). The combination of mountains, forests and lakes creates a very picturesque area outside the city limits, called with a large share of justice "Ural Switzerland".

Economy

In 1992, in connection with the conversion, the Karabash branch of the Kamensk-Ural Radio Plant was withdrawn into an independent enterprise PO "October", which produces consumer goods, fulfills orders of civil aviation and automotive industry. There are 3 forestry departments in the city: Agardyash, Karabash, Ufa, which are part of the Kyshtym forestry. The forest area is 53.5 thousand hectares. The species composition of the forest: deciduous - 56.2%, coniferous - 43.8%. There is one motor transport company in the city, organized in 1953. Since 2000, the company has been operating as part of Yuzhuraltrans Plus LLC.

The network of highways is represented by the railway line of the Chelyabinsk distance of the track and the station Pirit YuUZhD, the Kasli-Miass highway, which runs through the administrative territory of Karabash.

Environmental situation

Over the entire 90 years of operation of the plants in Karabash until the last one was shut down in 1989, the principle of metal production and equipment did not change significantly, the treatment facilities were practically not improved.

During the production of copper from copper ore, a large amount of harmful substances is formed, mainly gases, such as lead, sulfur, arsenic and, in fact, copper. These gases were released unhindered into the atmosphere and were not cleaned. As a result, the total weight of emissions for the full period of operation of the plants amounted to more than 14 million tons. By the way, at the Mednogorsk copper-sulfur combine, sulfur is extracted from ore and processed into sulfuric acid, but this has never been done in Karabash.

By Order No. 299 of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation dated June 25, 1996, the city of Karabash and adjacent territories were characterized as an ecological disaster zone, but in 2009 the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation excluded Karabash from the list of cities with the highest level of atmospheric pollution due to the improvement of the environmental situation.

In 2005, a wet catalysis unit of the Haldor Topse company for the purification of sulfur-containing emissions and the production of sulfuric acid was launched at Karabashmed CJSC.

At the end of June 2010 (the year of the mill's centenary), a unique natural phenomenon was observed - premature autumn. The leaves on the trees turned yellow, the grass withered, the entire crop on the homesteads died. The owners of the plots were preparing lawsuits against the copper plant, but the courts never took place.

In July 2010, the Office of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation in the Ural Federal District judicially ordered CJSC Karabashmed to modernize production in order to stop environmental pollution with harmful emissions.

In 2014, a landfill for solid household waste was built with the money of the regional budget, which is also planned to be used for the needs of neighboring Zlatoust, Miass and Chebarkul. A small town (10 thousand inhabitants) has become a giant landfill for the disposal of waste of a significant part (more than 450 thousand people) of the Chelyabinsk region.

In 2019, a waste sorting plant was opened in Karabash.

In May 2019, the former host of the TV show "Heads and Tails" Evsey Kovalev visited Karabash and shared his impressions about the ecological situation in the city.

According to the environmental control data, during the year the pipes of the plant in Karabash release more than 180 tons of gases into the atmosphere, which then fall on the city in the form of acid rain and white flakes.

In the course of studies conducted in the 2000s - 2010s, it was revealed that the air, soil, reservoirs and groundwater in the city are intensively polluted in quantities many times exceeding the maximum permissible standards. Thus, there is an excess of the concentration of mercury, cadmium, nickel, antimony, bismuth, sulfates, hundreds of times copper, lead, arsenic, manganese, which meets the criteria of an environmental disaster zone. There is also a deterioration of medical and demographic indicators in the city, so the total mortality in 2014 was the highest in the region, the content of lead, arsenic, cadmium in children's hair, and cadmium in the blood is higher than the norm. Air, soil and water pollution is caused not only by existing production, but also by accumulated waste, wind erosion of exposed sections of the bottom of reservoirs, flushing by storm and meltwater from the soil surface, penetration through mine workings into aquifers. In addition to the impact of these pollutants on the health of the population of Karabash, they flow into the Argazinsky reservoir, the water from which is supplied to the water supply of the city of Chelyabinsk.

The "Federal target program of priority urgent measures for 1996-2000 for the withdrawal of the territory of the city of Karabash from the state of ecological disaster and the improvement of the population" was developed. In order to improve the quality of drinking water, within the framework of the federal project "Preservation of unique water bodies", the Ministry of Ecology of the Chelyabinsk Region is implementing a set of environmental measures, the key of which are the construction of a diversion channel of the Sak-Elgi River and a hydro-mechanical site.

In the city there are Bogorodsky pond on the Sak-Elga River used as a sump pond, a sump pond on the Olkhovka River, on the northeastern outskirts there is a Silver reservoir lake with regulated flow, the drain (Serebryanka River) from which replenishes the City (Karabashsky) pond, then drains from it into Bogorodsky Pond. The city pond has been improved, industrial discharges no longer merge into it. The lake-reservoir of Serebry and the Kialim reservoir are used for the economic and drinking water supply of the city. At the same time, despite the fact that Silver is the least polluted of all reservoirs in the city, given that some pollutants are contained in high concentrations in the water, it is recommended to use it only as a backup source of water supply.