Currently, Bor and 6 neighboring villages are experiencing air and soil pollution from production processes and slag dump sites, mainly sulfur dioxide accompanied with heavy metal particles; deforestation and land erosion from opening new mines; and water pollution from the industrial process. Besides the industrial waste water, the municipal waste water has been discharged into the Borska River and the Kriveljska River without any pre-treatment. Several wells for drinking water have been closed down due to the pollution. The farmers and beekeepers also reported negative effects on their production. Several time the company had to compensate the farmers for damage as decided in court cases. The detonations from one of the mining sites damaged houses in village Veliki Krivelj, located only 800 meters away. It was reported higher occurrence of respiratory diseases and cancer in local people. However, as there is no official studies on health impact, no juridical case based on the mines health hazard was ever processed.

Local NGOs is promoting the case through public debates, petitions, protests, reporting to the environmental inspection and submitting appeals to the Serbian government. The environmental inspection started several juridical cases against the mines, but they have still not been processed. Several times, after the episodes of high air pollution, the foundry production was stopped but only for only few days. In 2007, the mine was intended to be privatized, without any success. Another severe pollution occurred in 2009, when the local government managed to make the national government to start the restoration project. The money for “Bor Regional Development Project” was provided from the World Bank loan. Among other things, the project included construction of new foundry and sulfuric acid factory by the end of 2014. The restoration project would allow for expansion of the production, including opening of new mine pits and construction of flotation unit. In addition to the restoration project, the construction of industrial and municipal waste water treatment plant was agreed among the Bor municipality and the German company "BDH Consulting Group" in March 2014. A new foundry was built in 2014 and opened in March 2015. Given that the old foundry continued with its operation, the pollution was nor reduced and the citizens of Bor organised a series of protests in October 2015. The old foundry was closed in November 2015. RTB Bor is in difficult economic situation and the decision on who will take over the management over the company will be decided in Jun 2016. The other activities planned by the restoration project has never started and the government had to return back the money to WB and pay penalties in May 2015. Any further work on environmental improvements will have to be paid from public money, such as the construction of a new collector to conduct Kriveljska river below the tailings Veliki Krivelj that currently represents a ticking ecological bomb threatening the region and beyond.

For production of 3 kg of pure copper it is necessary to excavate 1 tonne of ore.

Yearly production is 200,000 tonnes of concentrate from which copper (purity of 99,99%) is produced.

The planned production for 2014 is 40,000 tonnes of copper, 1,300 kg of gold and 8,500 kg of silver, which is followed with excavations of 58 million tonnes of ore.

The annual production is planned to be expanded to processing of 400,000 tonnes of concentrate from which 80-100,000 tonnes of pure copper will be produced.

The maximum allowable concentration of sulfur-dioxide is 350 mg per m3. Severe pollution happened several times that reached concentrations of sulfur-dioxide even up to 38,100 mg per m3 (100 times more then allowed). The sulfur-dioxide concentration in air crosses the maximum allowable concentration sometimes even 250 days per year.

278 million USD cost construction of new foundry and sulfuric acid plant.