Tashkur Area. Unreclaimed section of the extraction of sarita, gypsum-limestone.
The damage to soils from the barbaric extraction of construction materials, sand, and shell rock has reached alarming proportions in Kyrgyzstan. It is the raw materials for construction that are most often the target of illegal extraction, both by "black geologists" and licensed companies.
To grasp the scale of illegal and semi-legal development of deposits of the same saw limestone, one does not need to look far. It is enough to open any image of Kyrgyzstan on Google Maps, zoom in - and everything is visible as if in the palm of your hand. The white spots on the image are quarries with disturbed lands where reclamation is not carried out. This is a gross violation of the development of deposits. The working project for the development of a deposit stipulates that the start of quarry development and land reclamation is a continuous cycle. While continuing work on the deposit, the subsoil user must also reclaim already worked areas. No one is engaged in reclamation here, violating project solutions and conditions for subsoil use.
Development companies are not interested in reclaiming worked areas, as this is the most costly part of production. It is much more profitable to extract and sell raw materials, and then, having made a solid profit, simply leave the deposit without investing money in filling in the quarry. In addition to the material damage, such pirate extraction of construction materials causes colossal harm to the environment. Millions of tons of fertile soils, exposed during the development of quarries, lie in dumps, losing their properties. Furthermore, mining production is characterized by high waste, which is explained by the imperfection of the technologies used.
As a result, many mining enterprises have formed huge quarries and production dumps of rock, which occupy useful lands and, under the influence of wind and water erosion, are a constant source of pollution of the surrounding natural environment.
Sary-tash is a type of limestone - a porous sedimentary organic rock of medium hardness, formed from the remains of marine organisms, crushed or whole shells, and mollusks.
The process of its formation took more than a million years. Coastal areas were submerged by the sea, the remains of microorganisms and mollusks fell to the bottom and remained in the marine sand. Over time, the water receded, and the sandy shoals gradually became covered with a layer of soil, which acted as a kind of press, under which the dense rock was formed.
Sary-tash is widely used in construction and finishing works. It is used to produce wall blocks for erecting partitions, which is an excellent natural alternative to foam concrete. Due to its porosity, it has high sound insulation and low thermal conductivity. Shell rock is easy to process, can be sawed and shaped. It is widely used in construction as wall and facing material; gravel and sand from shell rock are fillers for lightweight concrete.
In the territory of Kyrgyzstan, there are more than 170 known deposits of natural facing stone: granite, limestone-shell rock, and so on.
The number of operating and under-construction stone processing enterprises exceeds 60, including 20 in Bishkek and its surroundings, and 40 in the south of the Republic.
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