EcoLur
The strategic development plan of solid waste management in Armenia proposes to collect the whole garbage in the republic in 5 landfill sites. It’s planned to locate landfill sites in Shirak, Lori, Kotayq, Yerevan and Syunik. Yerevan landfill site will be the expanded version of Nubarashen landfill site, which will use the existing part of Nubarashen area. It will have annually a conditional 300,000 tons of capacity and 20 years of life and, besides Yerevan, it will also serve Armavir, Ararat, Vayots Dzor and Aragatsotn.
The Regional environmental center for Caucasus Armenia National Office together with the Ministry of Nature Protection and UNECE is implementing Strategic Environmental Assessment for Solid Waste Management Sector in Armenia. On 19 August 2016 the public discussion of the initial project was held at Yerevan Municipality, where the representatives of public and state sector, as well as project experts took part.
“According to initial strategy plan, we are planning to have 5 large landfill sites in Armenia. We can’t have individual landfill site for each community, it’s wrong in terms of environment, health and control,” Project coordinator Tigran Oganezov said in his interview with EcoLur.
“According to statistical data, around 1529000 m3 or 535.200 tons of household garbage generates and is transferred to landfill sites, out of which 57.0% (868.0 m3) makes up the share of Yerevan.”
There are 242 landfill sites operating in Armenia, which occupy 1344 ha area. Besides, there are officially not registered 196 landfill sites occupying 171.2 ha area. The largest is Nubarashen landfill site, which occupies around 50 ha area. At the same time, the area adjacent to landfill sites are in extremely poor conditions, most of them don’t comply with the standards of sanitary protection zones,” the project says.
According to Azganush Drnoyan, project expert and expert of “Environmental Expertise” SNCO of RA Nature Protection Ministry, one of the project aims is to eliminate illegal landfill sites in Armenia. According to the expert, the accumulation of the whole garbage in 5 sites will enable exercising proper control and further monitoring.
Karine Danielyan, Chairman of “For Sustainable Human Development” NGO, is sure, that accumulation of all garbage in five places is economically beneficial, but not feasible. “The option of 5 places is not feasible under the conditions of Armenia. I myself have seen many times how the truck drives out of the city ad dumps the garbage into the river without reaching the landfill site,” Karine Danielyan said, “Besides, we are speaking about household wastes, but we don’t have any landfill site, which accepts industrial wastes. In practice, they are mixed together and dumped into the landfill site designed for household wastes. This problem also needs solution.”
Inga Zarafyan, President of “EcoLur” Informational NGO noted that a new landfill site is planned to be constructed in immediate proximity to Nubarashen landfill site with a total of 24 million Euros (16 million loan funds and 8 million Euro grant funds). Nevertheless, this project doesn’t say anything about garbage sorting, recycling and mechanisms of pricing policy. “There is no clear strategy on waste management in Yerevan, where the largest landfill site is located. The principles of European policy are not applied in this multi-million Nubarashen project. We should think how to introduce European standards of waste management in this strategy,” Inga Zarafyan said.
Environmental Department Head of Yerevan Municipality Avet Martirosyan told EcoLur that the Municipality won’t give its agreement to bring the garbage of four regions without sorting and recycling.
August 25, 2016 at 16:24