The Supreme Administrative Court ruled about the required level of MAR plant investigations and the conditions for granting a permit

The Supreme Administrative Court rejected the Tavase project, which had been pending for more than 20 years, and revoked the permits issued by the Vaasa Administrative Court and the Regional Administration Agency.

With its decision KHO 2024:47 the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the MAR plant project must be treated as a whole, and it may not be divided into separate parts with the decisions of the Regional Administration Agency. The project with its separate production areas in Pälkäne and Kangasala forms an entity when evaluating the conditions for granting a permit, and the permit conditions should have been met in all production areas separately.

Moreover, the Supreme Administrative Court stated that there flaws in the application of the groundwater flow model created for the simulation of the operation of the Pälkäne production area, due to which the results produced by the model cannot be considered reliable for evaluating the groundwater effects caused by the operation. To improve the reliability of the model, it should have been calibrated in both steady state and transient conditions and based on comprehensive measurement data obtained from the experiments.

According to the decision by the Supreme Administrative Court, the unreliable groundwater flow modeling was insufficient for assessing the impacts caused by the operation of the Pälkäne production area. The Supreme Administrative Court stated that the impacts of the production area are not assessed in accordance with the established case law, so that any kind of justified scientific doubt about the significantly weakening effects on the nature values of the nearby Natura area could be dispelled. Based on this, the Supreme Administrative Court concluded that the permit cannot be granted for the Pälkäne production area and that therefore the project as a whole does not meet the conditions for granting a permit.