Residents Collect Signatures Against Third Tailing Dump in their Village

Residents of Melikgyugh rural community in Aragatsotn marz (province) collected signatures against the construction of the third tailing dump in their village. A third tailing dump of Mego-Gold LLC's Tukhmanuk gold mine was already once rejected by the RA Ministry of Nature Protection, but on Feb. 10 the issue of opening the tailing dump was again discussed in the village.

Environmentalist Silva Adamyan, in conversation with Epress.am, said the villagers weren't informed that there would be public hearings, which is a procedural violation. According to her, village mayor Hakob Mkrtchyan committed one other violation: public hearings must be held at least 20 days after the previous hearing; meanwhile, public hearings in Melikgyugh took place on Feb. 10 and 12. 

Villagers greeting the environmentalists also said that they're asking the public hearings be held not in Yerevan, but in their village, as they are the community that is affected. "The villagers greeted us with complaints. They said that the two tailing dumps already have made life unbearable in the village, they are damaging the bees and nature, the environment. Thus, they are fundamentally against the exploitation of a third tailing dump," said Adamyan. 

According to her, environmentalists also intend to appeal in writing to the Ministry of Nature Protection, as operation of a third tailing dump is not permitted. 

Adamyan said that Mega-Gold, under the guise of a new project, introduced a project that the ministry already rejected.

According to environmentalists, operation of the tailing dump is inadmissible for the following reasons: data on what the tailings contain don't correspond to the composition of ore, and there is no data on heavy metals and toxic elements, which remain after the gold is extracted. There is no assessment of the contamination of the soil and water arising from the existing two tailing dumps. This contamination can be assessed indirectly from the findings of analyses conducted by the RA National Academy of Sciences' Center for Ecological Noosphere Studies and scientific articles about the composition of ore in the Tukhmanuk mine. There is no data on the possible effect of tailings on public health. As evident from the Ministry of Nature Protection's response, the ministry's experts did not conduct research in the village and relied exclusively on the project's documents, which don't reflect the real situation.