EcoLur
Shnogh community residents, Lori Region, irrigation their land areas with the water of Debed and Shnogh Rivers contaminated with mining wastes. Starting from 2014, according to the data of 'Center for Environmental Impact Monitoring' SNCO of Nature Protection Ministry, the water of Shnogh River has become the worst quality, class 5.
In the territory of Armenia Akhtala ore processing plant and Alaverdi copper smelting combine pollute the river with industrial wastes. 'Akhtala ore processing plant has leaks from the tailing dump once or twice weekly, while we irrigate our land areas mainly with the Debed water. We water our land areas at night and in the morning we see that 2-3 cm of tails have residue on the harvest, which destroys it,' Shnogh Deputy Community Head Koryun Shadinyan is beating an alarm signal and adding that most village irrigates their land areas with Debed river water, while users from Shnogh River make up low percentage.
Koryun Shadinyan said that it's already two years since Teghout company has been sampling the community harvest for lab analysis. 'The concentration of heavy metals in the fruit already exceeds the MPC several times, which is mainly because of Alaverdi copper smelting combine and Akhtala plant,' Koryun Shadinyan said.
Heavy metals pass into human organism through food chain, which are carcinogenic, according to the experts.
November 01, 2016 at 16:23