Armenian Greens Alarmed at Chemical Dump Plan
Mining firm denies re-opening waste site for use will create health hazard for local population.
Armenian Greens Alarmed at Chemical Dump Plan
Mining firm denies re-opening waste site for use will create health hazard for local population.
Environmentalists in Armenia say the planned re-opening of a mining waste dump could present a health risk for people living nearby.
The Nahatak storage facility was built 35 years ago to house chemical waste and tailings from a copper ore-enrichment plant at Akhtala in northeast Armenia. It was closed at the end of the Soviet period.
Metal Prince Ltd, the firm that owns the Akhtala plant, is planning to start using the storage site again.
Local residents say they have not been consulted about the plan or warned of any possible risks.
“The company has above all an obligation to hold public discussion groups and to ask local farmers whether they agree to having a dangerous new facility right under their noses,” Inga Zarafyan, head of the environmental group Ekolur, said, adding that the firm should publicise plans for how the dump would be refurbished and run.
Local residents complain that material from the dump has been contaminating their land for years.
“Sometimes water from the dump seeps into the irrigation system that waters our land, and flows into a field near the dump,” Samvel Gigloyan, local government chief in Chochkan, one of two villages bordering the dump site. “I don’t know what basis they have for deciding to start using it again.”
Villagers complain that they have received no information about Metal Prince’s plans for restoring the site.
“We live directly near the dump so we’ll be the first to be harmed. But no one has time for us; they don’t even ask us,” Chochkan resident Anahit Vahramyan said.
Metal Prince has expressed surprise at the concerns now being raised. It says no one raised concerns about the dump when it although lay abandoned for two decades, and environmentalists have only started talking about it now that the company is starting to refurbish it.
Armenia’s environment ministry is concerned about the current situation at the dump, in its unrepaired state.
Seyran Minasyan, deputy head of the ministry’s Environmental Impact Monitoring Centre, says drainage channels underneath the site have become blocked, and “as a result, water remains there, creating a fluid mass. During heavy rain or an earthquake, there could be a landslip which could cause environmental pollution”.
Minasyan said the dump needed to be refurbished to the highest possible standards, adding that if this did not happen, “the contents – 22 million cubic metres of toxic chemicals – could fall into the river Debed at any time, closing the road and the railway”.
Vladimir Abelyan, a consultant working for the Akhtala ore-enrichment plant, said concerns about the re-opening of the dump were unfounded.
He said there was nothing like as much as 22 million cubic metres tons of waste at the site, and said there was no chance of material sliding into the river Debed.
Abelyan said the site had nearly two million cubic metres of spare space, and given current levels of ore production, it could be in use for another six or seven years.
He also said the pipes taking water to and from the store were being restored to prevent any chance of neighbouring fields being polluted.
Local residents said they had not been informed of this work, and expressed concern that the company had not thought to tell them.
“Couldn’t they have held discussions before they started work, to agree it with the local community?” Zarafyan asked.
Gayane Mkrtchyan is a correspondent for ArmeniaNow.
