Environmentalists warn against Armenia's Tezh Mountain mine’s exploitation

Exploitation of Tezh Mountain mine, in Armenia’s Kotayk province, was studied and approved still in the soviet years but cancelled because of threat to the environment, member of Trchkan civil initiative Levon Galstyan told the reporters today.

He said this year Aluminum Corporation has been granted permission to study the territory. “It was very difficult to understand how the company has been established and what it deals with as it does not have mining history,” Levon Galstyan said.

“After canceling public hearings over the issue for several times, a person came from the company who did not manage to answer any question. As a result, the discussion failed,” he said.

“The damage to environment in case of mine’s exploitation has not been assessed, while there are rivers, forests close to the mountain,” he explained, adding that the exploitation project does not register any work in that direction. “It seems like all the projects are taken from one place with the names of the places being changed,” he claimed.

Galstyan said that the Nature Protection Ministry is not digging deep in the issue to understand whether the company is worthy to get mining permit or not.

Environmentalist Inga Zarafyan said, though wide-scale works have been implemented during the soviet period for the exploitation of the mine, the process was stopped taking into consideration the public interest.

“Taking into consideration the location of children’s camp 15-20 km off the mountain, academic Fadey Sargsyan said we need healthy children. The project was closed though big sums were invested in it,” she said, adding that its exploitation is a great environmental threat.