EcoLur
“EcoLur” Informational NGO has sent its opinion on Tailing Dump Construction Project in Meliq Village to the Ministry of Nature Protection.
The opinion says, “The tailing dump construction project in Meliq village proposed by Mego Gold Company should be turned down on the following grounds: the project doesn’t reflect the factual risks and the project is isolated from complex issues of extraction, production and maintenance of industrial wastes.
The tailing dump should be the third one in the territory of Meliq village. It should collect the tails of Mega Gold gold-extracting production. The plant processes gold-bearing ore of Tukhmanuk gold mine. The data submitted in the project about the composition of tails don’t comply with the composition of ores, the data about the presence of toxic metals and toxic elements left after gold extraction are missing in the project. The assessment of background pollution of water and land areas caused by two operating tailing dumps is also missing in the project. It’s possible to indirectly judge about the pollution based on the results of the analysis carried out by the Center for Ecological Noosphere Studies of NAS RA presented to the public and by the research articles about the composition of ore in Tukhmanuk mine. The data about the probable impact on human health are missing. As Health Ministry response shows their specialists haven’t carried out any examinations in the village and they relied exclusively on the project documentation, which doesn’t reflect the real situation.
What about environmental expertise experts’ opinion, in the course of specialized hearings at Nature Protection Ministry held on 19 April, they confirmed that they relied not on the studies of the situation, which already has sharply negative background, but on the data in literature, i.e. they don’t handle the situation. The minutes of the public hearings held in Meliq Village on 27.11.2012 don’t comply with what public representatives and the locals said at the hearings proved by the video recording made by EcoLur in the course of the public hearings. In the course of the discussions held at Nature Protection Ministry on 19 April 2013 Mego Gold Company Director Ashot Poghosyan stated many times when answering to the questions that the final replies to the questions about risks raised by public can be given only when a new project for Tukhmanuk mine development will be submitted.
We propose to consider the problem of keeping industrial wastes of Tukhmanuk mine development in complete documentation package, where not only the tailing dump project will be submitted, but also the projects of mine development and gold-extracting production.”
April 25, 2013 at 15:16