The environmental permit for the BASF Harjavalta pCam plant is legally final

Our Environment & Natural Resources team’s Partner Heidi Malmberg has been assisting BASF with the environmental permitting process for the Harjavalta pCam plant since June 2021, when the Vaasa Administrative Court overturned the first environmental permit, first at Castrén & Snellman and later at Borenius together with Hanna Lehtinen. The environmental permit for the Harjavalta pCam plant is now legally final as the Vaasa Administrative Court decision issued on 12 July 2024 was not appealed. The environmental permit as amended by the Vaasa Administrative Court would allow the start of the operations at the Harjavalta plant once a crystallizer plant has been installed. The permitting process of the BASF Harjavalta pCam plant has been widely discussed both domestically and internationally, due to uncertainties as regards what protection measures are required to ensure that the risk of groundwater contamination is completely excluded as well as the lack of limit values for sodium sulphate emissions to river water in Finland.

The road to having a legally final environmental permit required intense cooperation between the BASF management in Finland, the environmental and technical consultants and the legal teams. The decision of the Vaasa Administrative Court establishes, for the first time in Finland, clear rules on groundwater protection requirements for industrial operations in groundwater areas. The sodium sulphate emissions that were a concern during the first environmental permit process were reduced to insignificant levels in the new permit application by changing the process so that sodium sulphate is extracted and becomes a by-product of the process. Since the issuance of the first environmental permit, the Finnish Environmental Institute has also published a report on suggestions for new environmental quality standards for river water. Based on that report, the original sulphate emission would have also been possible.