Nikita Zarobyan, the Golos Armenii
PUBLIC KEEP ON WORRYING ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL SIDE EFFECTS OF TEGHOUT MINE DEVELOPMENT
...The tailing dump with a capacity of 500 million tons of toxic industrial wastes requires huge expenses and is an immediate danger for present and next generation, and it is intended to dump into the riverbed still flowing along Kharatadzor Gorge. 600 million tons of relatively neutral ore are also intended to dump there. For a comparison, the capacity of Teghout tailing dump will exceed the capacities of all current existing 15 tailing dumps scattered all over Armenia, while the problem with their reclaiming hasn’t been solved so far: they keep on causing damage to nature and people and permanently require new financial investments into environmental events.
...The river in Kharatadzor Gorge is still blocked with a concrete dike, the water will flow over the concrete ditch and after 7,5 km it will get into its natural bed. The whole gorge will be thus filled with industrial wastes.
ACP Company representatives state that modern technologies they use will exclude any ingress of toxic industrial wastes into the Debed River, while the river covered with a dam flows into the Debed River. Nevertheless, one shouldn’t be a specialist to understand this is not possible, as a matter of fact, all man-made structures have limited lifetime.
...The tailing dump is situated in an active seismic zone where on average each 100 years earthquakes of 9 points will take place that will bring to landslips, dam and concrete dike destruction. In its turn this will lead to the washout of industrial toxic wastes accumulated in the tailing dump into the Debed River, and then to the Kura River.
...INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ECOLOGICAL SAFETY HELD IN YEREVAN IN DECEMBER 2010 for Teghout mine development program. At this conference Georgian NGO representatives expressed their serious concern with possible transboundary impact of mine development on the ecological safety in Georgia.
What will have our people have in the positive – 1450 low-paid jobs for one generation, while the state budget will have extra proceeds of no more than 0,1% on average? That’s it. Certainly Mr. Mezhlumyan- as ACP company states- its only owner, will get several billion dollars of net earnings due to existing taxation system and copper and molybdenum price increase tendency, but this won’t refer to the Armenian people, as a whole.
...VTB Bank didn’t grant a loan of US \$ 249,5 million still on 27 May 2008, though ACP company did sign a loan agreement, so far financing is not available. Most probably the bank has suspicions in regard with environmental and economic sustainability of this project and suspicions about financing risks, respectively.
February 17, 2011