Norway defies supreme court ruling, permits mine waste dumping in pristine fjord

On the afternoon of June 17, 2026, a small group of people gathered in a school in Vevring, a fishing town on Norway's west coast, to hear news from Oslo. Through a laptop, surrounded by children's drawings and windows framing the Førde fjord beyond, they learned that Norway's supreme court had struck down a government permit. The court ruled that allowing a mining company to dump waste directly into the fjord, just two miles upstream, was illegal. After seventeen years of fighting—one of the country's most sustained environmental battles—the campaigners had won.

The victory felt absolute. Ingvild Fonn Asmervik, project leader for Naturvernforbundet, described the joy as comparable to giving birth. Anne-Line Thingnes Førsund, a third-generation fisher whose family had lived on the fjord's banks in Vevring, felt the weight lift. It was relief so profound it seemed to reshape the air around her. The moment should have ended the story.

It did not. Within days, a government lawyer appeared on television to announce plans for a new temporary permit. The mine would continue dumping waste into the fjord while the government pursued fresh authorization. Four days after the supreme court's decision, the mining company applied again. In late September, Norway's climate and environment ministry granted the new permit. Førsund described the reversal as if someone had pulled the carpet from beneath her feet. "We have answered every letter, commented on every consultation, complained whenever we could," she said. "We have been knocked down so many times and this could have been the opportunity for change."

The Engebø titanium mine, operated by Nordic Mining, uses a process called submarine tailings deposition—STD, or "fjord dumping" in the language of its critics. Crushed rock and chemical waste are pumped through underwater pipelines hundreds of meters down, dispersing into the sea. The practice is banned across North America, Australia, Russia, Brazil, China, and most of Europe. Only a handful of countries still permit it: Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Turkey. Norway, until recently, was not among them. The mine itself came online in late 2024 and began releasing waste immediately, even as the legal challenges continued.

Norway's own Institute of Marine Research warned that STD releases fine particles of toxic material that accumulate in smaller sea creatures and disrupt entire ecosystems. One researcher, Terje van der Meeren, described the waste as flour—so fine it passes through the fjord. The waste from Engebø includes a chemical that breaks down into carbon disulphide, a neurotoxin. "What will happen with the fish spawning in this fjord?" van der Meeren asked. "We know." In 2016, researchers traveled to Repparfjord in the Arctic, where a copper mine had dumped waste for six years in the 1970s. Decades later, they found haddock with elevated levels of lead, arsenic, and chromium compared to fish in nearby waters. Other studies documented historic STD contamination in plankton, crabs, and fish eggs.

The government's justification for overriding the supreme court centered on titanium's designation as a critical mineral by the European Union in 2020. A ministry spokesperson stated that the Engebø mountain holds one of the world's largest known deposits of rutile, a titanium-bearing ore, and that within Europe only Norway and Ukraine possess significant reserves. This reasoning, the government argued, constituted the "overriding public interest" required under the EU's water framework directive—the legal standard that had guided the supreme court's decision. But Tarjei Ellingsen Røsvoll, an associate professor of administrative and constitutional law at the University of Inland Norway, rejected this logic entirely. "A permit exists or it doesn't, and the supreme court decision is quite clear: the permit is illegal," he said. "The government is then openly allowing a company to dump a bunch of stuff in a fjord illegally. That is unprecedented; it damages trust and undermines a fundamental structure of constitutional and administrative law."

The broader context deepened the stakes. Atlantic salmon populations across Norway had reached historic lows. At the start of the fishing season, 155 of the country's roughly 450 salmon rivers were closed. A recent report showed that Norwegian fish farms alone were filling fjords and coastal waters with nutrient pollution equivalent to the raw sewage of tens of millions of people annually. Førsund, speaking from the perspective of someone whose family had drawn sustenance and meaning from these waters for generations, framed the issue beyond her own fjord. "This is not only about the fjord and us and our lives," she said. "This is about principles. When you have a government that doesn't respect the supreme court you're changing the system itself."

Nordic Mining, financed by investors including Japan's Iwatani Corporation and the British offices of Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Goldman Sachs, did not respond to requests for comment but posted on social media that it would continue its waste disposal practices with the encouragement of Norwegian officials. "It has been said that our operation is illegal, that we have to close, that our work must stop. That is not the situation," the company stated. Meanwhile, Norway's central office for white-collar and environmental crime began considering whether to investigate the dumping itself for illegality. Førsund and other campaigners prepared for another legal battle over the temporary permit, knowing that dumping would likely continue for years while the case proceeded. She looked back at photographs from early protests, taken more than a decade ago, showing people gathered for meals on the fjord's banks. Her daughter, now an architect, had been a child then. "So many of these people are dead now," Førsund said. "The fjord is bigger than us. It has given us food and income and meaning and music and fish and birds for thousands of years. Now it gives us the energy to keep fighting."