How villagers are helping scientists study the white stork

Eco-Touring Responsibly

Armenia’s big trash problem, and what Armenians can do about it

Why has gold mining got environmentalists upset in Lake Sevan and Hrazdan?

Yes, illegal pesticides like DDT are still in use in Armenia. On the plus side: here’s where to find pesticide-free produce in Armenia

And much more … Read on below for more environmental stories

You aren’t imagining things. Dr. Vardan Akunts, Armenia’s chief allergy specialist, has noticed an increase in the number and severity of allergy attacks.  The chief cause, he says, is emissions from Armenia’s steadily growing number of motor vehicles on the street.

According to figures provided by Yerevan’s environmental protection agency, 90 percent of air pollution in the capital of Armenia is because of emissions from transportation vehicles – cars, taxis, marshutkas and busses. That’s actually reduced from a year ago, claims the agency director, Avet Matirosyan, when the indicator was estimated at 99 percent.

The municipality relates the reduction of emissions caused by means of transport by 9% to the launch of new transportation links – the escalator at Barekamutyun Metro station, the tunnels in Heratsi and Khanjyan streets in Yerevan built between 2006 and 2008 as well as the active planting of greenery since last year.

According to data from the RA Police, by the end of May, 400,000 vehicles were registered in Armenia. The Yerevan-based Achilles NGO, which deals with the protection of drivers’ rights, estimates 55 percent of those vehicles are on Yerevan city streets.

And the number of cars has been growing rather rapidly ever since 2000, at an unprecedented speed especially in the recent years. In 2006 there were only 300, 000 cars in Armenia.

Cars mainly emit carbon monoxide, which makes it harder for people to breathe. The acceptable amount of carbon monoxide in the air is 3 milligrams per cubic meter. According to the data as of this May, in Yerevan at morning and evening rush hours this indicator went up to 2.5 milligrams per cubic meter, a number measured by the two automatic air pollution measuring devices installed in the capital this year.

Baghdasar Sengaryan, Head of the Influence on Environment Monitoring Center State Non-Profit Organization under the RA Ministry of Environmental Protection, said the high number is not yet at the maximum threshold, but it’s still a cause for concern.

“This does not mean that things are fine, approaching the norm is already deplorable, and we should give the alarm,” he said.

Still, Sengaryan downplayed the health concerns, contending carbon monoxide rapidly evaporates even from a light wind: “Of course, it is unpleasant when there is smoke and odor in the street, but carbon monoxide cannot do serious harm to health.”

Whereas Karine Danielyan, President of the For Human Sustainable Development Association, which actively deals with environmental issues, claimed the opposite: “Cars are operating immediately on the level of our respiratory organs. If you are walking in the street and there is a concentration of cars or traffic jam, or if you live in buildings close to busy streets, carbon monoxide directly affects your system.”

City officials contend that the solution is to reduce the number of private marshutkas, or mini busses, plying the streets – though their plans to reduce the numbers are sketchy, at best. In February, former Yerevan mayor Yervand Zakharyan claimed he would reduce the number of minibuses from 3,200 to about 650 in two years, mainly by replacing licenses for marshutkas with public busses.

But currently, Henrik Navasardyan, Head of the Municipality Transportation Agency, has backed that claim down, contending they’ll reduce the number of operating 3,200 mini-buses only to 2,450 by the end of the year.

“Now we have already reduced 500 vehicles because of technical reasons. We are planning to have new Gazel brand vehicles after the tender, for the old vehicles emit more gases than the new ones. In any case no vehicle of RAF brand will remain in the tender,” said Sengaryan.

Another solution to improve air quality being attempted by the city is to plant more green spaces, according to the Yerevan environmental protection agency.

The green area per capita was 7.2 square meters in Yerevan in 2008 as opposed to 4.9 square meters before, according to the agency. By 2020, the Municipality hopes to have increased this indicator up to 16 square meters per capita.

This claim, too, said Danielyan, may be premature:  “Many areas are considered green, but if we have a look at them we will see that it is a huge area with only one or two trees in it. Now they are counting only by hectares, but we have always been saying that they should also take into account the amount of the biomass in that territory, because it is the biomass that purifies the air and supplies with oxygen.”

According to the World Ecological Report the green area per capita by the highest standards must be 24 square meters.-By Sara Khojoyan/ArmeniaNow.com 

The project for the construction of the factory has been submitted by the Russian Geopromining company, which owns mines in Armenia and Georgia. In 2007, the Russian company purchased both the Ararat gold-mining enterprise and the Sotq gold mine from its Indian owners. Geopromining also owns the copper and molybdenum mining plant in Agarak.

The planned gold-processing plant Geopromining wants to build at Sotq, located a mere 10 kilometers from Sevan, is intended to reduce expenses for transporting mined gold. Currently, the ore is sent via a Soviet-era railcar to the Ararat gold-processing plant, more than 250 kilometers away from Sevan.

The Russian project is not yet approved by the Ministry of Environmental Protection; however the members of the SOS Sevan initiative group of the Union of 42 environmental non-governmental organizations fear that economic interests will prevail over environmental hazards.

Vardan Vardanyan, Chairman of the Geopromining Ltd. Board, has tried to assuage the public outcry. On April 26, in an interview for Yerkir Media TV, he contended that the company planned to introduce environmentally safe technologies: “Even if there is a small hazard, we will stop all work on the proposed plant at the Sotq mine operation.”

The Ministry of Environmental Protection has also tried to ease fears, regularly announcing that the fuss is pointless, because “the Ministry has neither received nor approved any official project yet,” said Deputy Minister Simon Papyan, adding that four years ago, the RA Ministry of Environmental Protection refused to permit a similar project proposed by the former owner of Ararat gold mining factory, the India-based Vedanta Resources Company.

“If the Ministry again receives an application about the Sotq project, they will turn it down again,” Papyan said.

Yet environmental activists charge that discussions about the plant are happening behind closed doors. The most damning evidence is a document the Union of Environmental NGOs has obtained, which measures the environmental impact of building the plant – crediting many government-sponsored scientists and resources. On March 2, the group claims it became a topic of discussion headed by Vice Prime-Minister Armen Gevorgyan at the Territorial Administration Ministry.

Evelina Ghukhasyan, Scientific Secretary of the Hydroecology and Ichthyology Institute who participated in some of the report studies, said that the preliminary conclusion given by the Institute and submitted to this structure contained no positive conclusion whatsoever, but admitted that the results were not being publicly discussed.

“There were only initial data, based on the results of an investigation of only a few months; whereas a long-lasting and serious investigation is needed in order to issue such a conclusion,” Ghukasyan said. “By the way, this is the first time when the results of a scientific investigation are discussed behind closed doors.”

In any case, activists contend this survey is illegal, because Lake Sevan is protected by law against any mining or processing activities.

“Article 10, the Law on Sevan, exists on the books, which definitely prohibits any activity threatening the lake, even more so, if the activity is a mining and processing one,” Inga Zarafyan, President of the EcoLur Environmental protection information center said.

While the proposed mine is being discussed secretly, environmentalists are making it public by regularly held protests and demonstrations and that the slogan “the pollution of the Sevan will ruin all of Armenia.”

“Polluting Lake Sevan will also entail some other serious consequences, such as contaminated drinking water, irrigation systems, spoilt agricultural fields, and destruction of fishing zones,” said Silva Adamyan, a spokeswoman for the Union of Environmental NGOs.

One of the main dangers of the factory construction is where to put the waste-dirt after the processing of the ore. Containing a toxic composition of heavy metals, antimony, arsenic, pyrite and so on, these chemicals can penetrate into the subterranean and ground waters with atmospheric precipitation, and from those waters into the Sevan.

“A waste water treatment pool filled with cyanide compositions, heavy and toxic substances is a bomb waiting to drop on Sevan,” said Karine Danielyan, president of the Association for Sustainable Human Development. “It will take approximately 40 million dollars annually to ensure the operation and safety of the toxic waste disposed in this process.”

Today environmentalists are fighting not only to stop to stop state-level discussions on the project of the gold processing factory construction, but also are watching parliament to make sure there is no amendment to Article 10 protecting the lake.

“They must guarantee that the RA legislation on environmental protection will not be modified to be adjusted to the small-scale interests of Geopromining Company, and the ban on mining stipulated in the RA Law on Lake Sevan will remain unchanged,” Zarafyan said.

Parliamentarian Khachik Harutyunyan, Chairman of the Commission on Agriculture and Environmental Protection in the National Assembly, said that the issue was being mainly discussed within NGO circles, for neither the Commission, nor the government had yet received, and consequently, considered, any official document from Geopromining or a proposal to change the Sevan laws. - By Gayane Mkrtchyan/ArmeniaNow.com

Exploring Armenia's natural wonders is rewarding if you know where to go and with whom you should travel for the best, most eco-friendly tourism experience.

Check out this pdf map of Armenia to find out where the best places to view Armenia’s natural wonders and camp, hike, bike, birdwatch and mountain climb. Also, get some names of some reputable eco-tourism companies, or learn how to ensure that your company can truly call itself eco-friendly.

The women Farmer Group of Gargar village in Lori Province cultivate herbs and other agricultural goods without chemical week killer, providing unique organic food for consumers in Armenia. PHOTO PROVIDED BY GREEN LANE AGRICULTURAL ASSISTANCE NGO.

Organic in Armenia?

That’s the goal of Nune Sarukhanyan, chairman of Green Lane, which delivers fresh produce each week in Yerevan grown by farmers in the Tavush region.

Tavush boasts the smallest amount of legal and illegal pesticides, says Sarukhanyan: “It is the safest region to grow organic products.”

Green Lane, an NGO existing since 2004, has been training farmers, sending experts out to help farmers use organic methods, and more importantly, distributing and selling their produce to larger local markets.  Recently, they’ve been pushing the use of reusable cloth bags to their customers to cut down on plastic bag use (see “Armenia’s big trash problem”).

“For example, cultivated plants are injected with specially prepared substances, say garlic solution, rather than toxic chemicals,” Sarukhanyan said.

Sarukhanyan’s larger goal is to get Armenian products to meet European organic standards.

“We’ve got many herbs and berries, particularly medicinal ones, that could be sold abroad,” she said. “There are greens unknown to us but there are many Diaspora living in Armenia familiar with those species, who are the main consumers of these products,” Sarukhanyan said.

WANT TO SUPPORT LOCAL FARMERS AND BUY ORGANIC PRODUCE?

Greenlane will deliver directly to your home or office each week. To get on the mailing list and order weekly products, e-mail: market@greenlane.am

For more information on Green Lane projects, go to www.greenlane.am
-By Armine Gevorgyan/Radio Hay

The results are alarming, but unfortunately also predictable.

This dilapidated dumping ground for chemical week killer is described by health experts as a "ticking time bomb," buried in Erebuni in a landslide-ridden area. The chemical has already been found in livestock and breast milk. PHOTO BY ARMENIAN WOMEN FOR HEALTH AND A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT.

The richly fertile valley is Armenia’s major food basin from which most of the republic’s produce is harvested. The valley is also “rich” in traces of DDT. The chemical pesticide was banned in Armenia in the 1970s, but is believed to still be in use today. A highly stable compound, it is currently seeping into Armenia’s water, land, livestock and even people.

“The problem with DDT is that it lasts forever,” said Simonyan. “Even if people stopped using the pesticide in the 1970s, it would still be in their systems 40 years later. And we believe people are still using it today.”

First developed as a lice killer and insecticide during World War II, DDT was widely used in Armenia and many other countries in Europe and in the U.S. throughout the 1950s and 1960s. A ban on the pesticide was instituted in the U.S. in 1972 after researchers noted that spraying it was a contributing factor in the near extinction of bald eagles and peregrine falcons, by weakening the bird’s eggshells and causing them to crack. Laboratory tests in animals have shown that DDT can cause cancer and other health problems, and DDT exposure has been shown to be associated with premature births and lower birth weight in babies.

There is debate in the international scientific community about whether the ban on DDT in many countries is more helpful than harmful. Many scientific groups have argued that DDT was responsible for eliminating the malarial mosquito.  These opponents of the ban contend that discontinuing use of DDT has led to an increase in malarial deaths across the globe. In 2006, the World Health Organization actually reversed its policy on the ban, and now advises it for use in fighting malaria in Africa and other mosquito-ridden areas of the world.

What is agreed upon is that DDT stays in the ground, animal populations and humans for years – even decades – after the pesticide is out of use.

Specialists do not know the real situation with regard to expired chemical pesticides in Armenia, nor do they know how many farmers are using DDT. The Ministry of Agriculture says it is  necessary, and yet impossible, to conduct a final inventory of expired chemical pest-killers imported into Armenia since 1997. The ministry is considering an announcement, asking the population to hand over expired chemicals and receive quality chemicals in exchange. But this entails some other, more difficult work: how to preserve or with what means to destroy the collected expired chemical pesticides.

Simonyan said she’s personally seen the largest amount of DDT in the Ararat Valley and the Ararat province in particular. The chemical there has been found in both soil and products made of animal tissues. She said people widely used DDT in the region, which is why it predominates over other revealed chemicals. The organization she heads found DDT in one of the chemical production outlets several years ago, with no such cases being reported later.

In Ararat villages such as Margara, Apaga, Aknashen and Sev Jur village in Armavir Province, DDT is showing up in the bird population.  Researchers have noticed that reproduction of storks (read “Storks”) is low, and one hypothesis is that DDT is the culprit.

Another potential danger spot is Yerevan’s Erebuni neighborhood, site of a burial ground of expired DDT and other pesticides, put there by the Agriculture Chemistry of Armenia state-run enterprise in 1982. Since then, the area has experienced several landslides. 

“There are no destruction mechanisms, and complicated technology is needed. At this point no one is able to find solutions, and the state does not have so much money. The situation is in a state of neglect,” warned Karine Yesayan, Head of the Horticulture Development Department under the Plant Cultivation, Forestry and Plant Protection Agency of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Environmental experts are concerned that the problems at the pesticide dumping ground are getting worse. Simonyan’s organization conducted an investigation into the surrounding soil. They discovered that the concentration of chemical pesticides, particularly that of DDT and hexachlorocyclohexane (another pesticide) exceeds the marginal permissible amount by several hundred times, and has increased in recent years.

Currently, the Global Environmental Foundation through the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has allocated 2.5 million Euros to liquidate the burial ground of toxic chemicals. The program will be launched after an assessment of the situation. Yesayan said the chemicals must first be exhumed from the burial ground, packaged and only later destroyed.

“The residential districts are now closer to the burial site, hence any time the toxic substances may penetrate into the drinking water or reach the population through the soil. In a word, this is dangerous, this is a bomb, immediately next to Yerevan,” said Yesayan. -By Hasmik Hambardzumyan/Panorama.am

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYLE: Bring your own bag to the market to reduce the amount of trash you throw away. PHOTO BY WWW.ICIS.COM

1. BAN THE (PLASTIC) BAG

That’s caused some countries to take radical action: From South Africa and Kenya to India and New York, for example, the use of the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag has been made illegal – and business owners who pass them out get a hefty fine.

When Ireland introduced the “Plastax” in 2002, requiring that shoppers pay 33 cents for each bag, within weeks the use of plastic bags dropped by 94 percent, and today, the streets of Ireland cities are virtually plastic-bag free, according to a recent New York Times article.  Ditto in Taiwan, where restaurants were required to charge citizens for plastic knives, forks and bags: that reduced the usage by nearly 70 percent immediately.

So why not return to cloth bags: your grandmother does it, why can’t you?

2. TURN YOUR KITCHEN SCRAPS INTO COMPOST

Old coffee grounds, banana peels, apple cores, egg shells, and vegetable scraps can be combined and turned into a great fertilizer for gardens and potted flowers alike. Just keep them in a bin in the kitchen, and mix them outside with a mix of grass and shrub clippings, leaves and even newspaper.

Lay soil over your compost pile, then keep adding more layers of kitchen scraps, and soil.

3. AVOID BUYING PLASTIC

 Plastic is made from gas and oil. Don’t use styrofoam. It is non-recyclable and non-biodegradable. Drink water from a tap, not from a plastic bottle.

4. FREECYCLE.ORG

Six years ago, a group of Americans who wanted to give away free what they no longer needed  created an e-mail group to allow members to both give and get. Since then, freecycle.org has e-mail lists in 85 countries and serves thousands of groups and millions of members. Site managers say they save 500 tons of trash per day from going into landfills. There is no Armenian version, maybe it’s time to start one?

The mountains of garbage piled at Yerevan's Nubarashen dump have an apocolyptic feel. Who will be responsible for building an environmentally sound landfill in the country? PHOTO BY ROBYN WISHNA

When Arkadzi Sahakyan, head of the Avarayr Eco-Tour Company, leads tourists to visit Armenia’s natural wonders, steering his group away from trashed-out hillsides, rivers and even protected reserves has become a regular occupational hazard.

“All of Armenia is a trash can,” he said. “We are used to this, but we don’t like it. If you had guests in your house and there was litter all over the floor, wouldn’t you feel embarrassed?”

The beauty of Armenia is becoming harder to find, under a mounting pile of garbage. Armenians throw out more than one million tons of trash each year into unlined, untreated garbage dumps or the nearest ravine. That’s 350 kilograms of trash per person, according to Armenian Women for Health and Healthy Environment NGO.

It’s not only unsightly, but also dangerous: 70 different hazardous substances, causing everything from cancer to asthma, are emitted into the air when trash – particularly plastics – are burned. Burying hazardous wastes such as the illegal pesticide DDT actually mean the product gets into the water supply, livestock, and eventually into humans (see “Toxic pesticide . . .”, Page 7). None of the country’s primary dumping grounds – in Yerevan’s Nubarashen and Ajapnyak neighborhoods – have any mechanism to process the waste or prevent it from seeping into the ground.

“None of the waste dumps meets the minimal requirements for sanitation. Here they just dump the waste, and think it’s done,” said Lilik Simonyan, a medical doctor working at the Armenian Women for Health and Healthy Environment NGO, which has conducted a number of surveys examining the health effects of Armenia’s trash disposal methods.

Simonyan said that as a rule, the waste dumps are poorly equipped in Armenia and lack regular records on the dumped rubbish, conditions to wash refuse trucks, and even means to properly dump the waste. Separation of paper and plastic rubbish is done only informally by people who later sell it to companies accepting such materials, to earn extra money.

“Waste dumps must have concrete walls or be located on areas that can be cleaned and washed, to avoid contaminating the environment,” said Simonyan. “Refuse chutes have to be made of metal in the high-storied buildings, and have to have the proper capacity of accommodation.”

Getting the government to invest and build a proper waste processing plant or landfill has proved nearly impossible. Technically, both collecting and disposing of waste is a municipal responsibility. Yet the cost of building an environmentally sound landfill is prohibitively expensive, and most cities – even Yerevan – can’t afford to build one on their own.

“We don’t have so much money to have an international standard landfill,” said Gagik Khachatryan, head of the Yerevan city municipality services department. “Our best option was to privatize (the service) and require a company to rebuild this landfill.”

It's hard to take this sign posted at Nubarashen dump, which says "Don't Litter, Penalty 50,000 AMD" seriously. Are political leaders seriously trying to create an environmentally sound landfill, or are they just paying lip service? PHOTO BY ROBYN WISHNA

Yet Yerevan hasn’t been moving quickly on that score. For eight years, the city negotiated with the Japanese company Shimidzu, which wanted to build a plant converting some of Nubarashen’s methane gas into electricity, which would be resold to Armenians. That permit was finally granted in March, but Shimidzu won’t rebuild a new landfill, but will only cover the existing one, said Hayk Mirzoyan, head of the industrial department of the Ministry of Economics.

“We are still trying to find a new operator, which may happen in September or October,” he said. “This new operator will be required to rebuild and manage the whole landfill.”

Part of the problem might be that some Armenian businessmen actually profit from keeping things the way they are, said Karine Danielyan, director of the Sustainable Development NGO.

“We’ve heard there is a businessman who collects the empty plastic bottles and uses them for some business,” she said.

If the landfill is privatized, she said, people such as that man would have to pay for access to the dump.

Still, there are a few efforts being made to recycle plastics, mostly in the private sector.

Yuri Sahakyan, director and founder of the PoliServ Company, suggests a new approach in the sphere. He uses plastic parts of old refrigerators, washing machines, telephone sets, and heels of shoes to produce construction materials.

Sahakyan says the enterprise he started in the town of Abovian 10 years ago offers more than 100 various types of products.

The plant uses 5-10 tons of material a month to produce the stock and half of it is recycled from old plastic parts. The businessman also plans to introduce technologies to recycle plastic bottles and packages when he can find capital for the project.

“I get the materials from the people who collect it at the waste dumps and in the streets. I buy for a dollar per kilo. Recycling helps me save money, as a kilogram of raw material costs about two dollars,” he said. -By Edgar Amirkhanyan/Ankakh Weekly

Stork scientist Maro Kochinyan meets with a village "researcher."

Across Armenia, from Novoseltsovo and Hovtashat to Areni, locals call Lusine Stepanyan and Maro Kochinyan “stork girls.”

Each year since 2005, the young scientists visit virtually every area where storks nest in Armenia and distribute special calendars among the residents living near the nests. These so-called “nest neighbors” fill in crucial data regarding stork movements in the calendars. That information includes the return date of the storks, the starting date of breeding, the first day they see the nestlings, the first day of nestlings’ flight, the date of the storks’ departure, as well as the number of the nestlings and whether they threw eggs or nestlings out of  the nest.

The unique research-public education project is run through American University of Armenia’s Acopian Environmental Research Center. Researchers use the information to study the patterns of migratory birds.

“We decided to study a widely-spread species rather than a rare bird or a species on the verge of extinction. It would enable us to see how the changes in the environment affect the number of birds and their nestlings,” said Karen Aghababyan, senior avian researcher at the research center.

Armenia is well-suited for such research because it has a large stork population evenly spread throughout the country, allowing researchers to examine the bird in a large and diverse area, he continued.

“The stork lives as a bird of prey. That is why we can see how they are affected by stable chemical pest-killers or heavy metals because the latter are accumulated in the birds in the food chain.”

Aghababyan said that recent data shows some interesting trends, including that in the last four years there is an increase in the number of storks.

“Besides, not only the number of couples, but also the number of nestlings has gone up,” Aghababyan said. There are a few reasons for this change. He says that the increase in the number of storks is firstly conditioned by the increase in available food, which, Aghababyan believes, is influenced by global warming.

“That is to say there are more insects that cause an increase in the number of frogs that are food for storks. In some places the increase in the number of storks may also be conditioned by the existence of poultry and fish farms that are surrounded by large quantities of food wastes.”

Aghababyan mentioned that some storks in Armenia living next to poultry farms are so well-fed, they don’t migrate to Africa at all, even for the winter.

Breaks in the pattern can offer important scientific information not just about the species, but also about the environment. For example, AUA researchers have noticed that there are storks in the Ararat Valley and Vayots Gorge that hatch out few or no nestlings whatsoever, which can indicate the use of illegal pesticides such as DDT, or other heavy metals that are harmful to the environment.

“The polluted area can be 20 kilometers away, but these substances come to the storks by water flow. Or else the stable organic chemical weed- and pest-killers that remain in the earth for a rather long period of time may come out and harm the storks because of a change in the use of land ,” Aghababyan said.

However, Stepanyan (one of the aforementioned “stork girl” researchers) cautions that four years is a very short period of time to draw serious conclusions on the influence of environmental changes on storks.

“In order to have a comprehensive picture we must study the storks for at least 20-25 years,” Stepanyan said.

The center is also able to provide aid for storks that are sometimes injured hitting high voltage cables near where they build their nests. However, the people who care for storks mostly inform the staff of the Center who treat the injured birds with the assistance of the Biodiversity Center functioning at the RA Botanical Institute.

“Last year we rehabilitated eight storks and successfully released them where we had caught them,” Aghababyan said.

Back in the villages, researchers Kochinyan and Stepanyan have made friends with all the “nest neighbors.” The young women said that it was difficult at the beginning; when they were distributing calendars, villagers demanded payment. The girls are proud that they have managed to convince all nest neighbors to become volunteers, and haven’t paid anyone to do the work.

 “Now it is much easier, we already know how to speak to the people. We talk cordially to one, we explain things scientifically to another,” Stepanyan said.

The majority of the population treats the storks very well, say the researchers, for traditionally the stork has been the symbol of luck and success. For example, in the village of Apaga, in Armavir province, storks often build their nests on the roofs of farmers’ houses, sometimes blocking the gutters. Even though the houses of the villagers get wet, they never remove stork nests.

“When the stork does not come back, many people relate all their failures to it. However, there are people whom storks disturb. For example, the birds break the glasses of someone’s greenhouse. They strike against them with force or carry heavy objects and drop them on the glass,” Stepanyan said. In some villages in the Ararat Valley, AUA researchers have actually documented villagers eating the bird.

But the majority of the Armenian rural population admire storks and consider them “beautiful birds,” such as Gohar Hayrapetyan, 41, a villager of Hovtashat, Ararat province.

Hayrapteyan said that she worked and at the same time enjoyed the view of the storks that had nested on the post in her vegetable garden.

“I draw parallels with our life. I watch them building their nests bringing in twigs, hatching out their young, and then the young ones leave. Just like people,” Gohar said.
-By Siranuysh Gevorgyan/ArmeniaNow.com

The hill in the background, looming over this Hrazdan city park, is the proposed loction for a metal processing plant. PHOTO BY ANI MATEVOSYAN.

But there are plans to build a metal-processing mine on the hill, close to three schools and residential houses in a settlement less than two kilometers from the town. The proposed plant has raised environmental concerns that heavy metal processing will release dust into the air that can, at worst, cause cancer and serious respiratory problems as well as clog up the air and water supply. The chemical elements can remain in the soil and human body for many years.

“The problem is that this mine is open where these heavy metals can be spread by the wind,” said Edgar Yengibaryan, coordinator of the Aarhus Environmental Information Center in Hrazdan. “Besides that, under this mine there are wells that provide drinking water for Hrazdan, Abovian, Gagarin, which can be poisoned.”

Nobody knows when exactly the Nagin Ltd. Company will build the metal processing plant, said Yengibaryan. When he directly asked this question to Ministry of Environment Minister Ara Haratyunyan in June, he said the minister would say only that “when we know the answer, we will tell you.”

Much of the planning has been done in secret. The ministry has posted a report on its website, claiming it offers an environmental impact study. Yet only the first 48 pages of the 90-page report are available, and the pages available show only the environment description and Hrazdan, but not the impact of the mine on the environment. The ministry has ignored repeated requests from a This Month reporter to provide the entire document.

Despite the Ministry of Environment’s claims of having organized public hearings in Hrazdan in February on the draft proposal, Yengibaryan contends the hearings weren’t publicized at all. They weren’t advertised on the local television station or newspaper, nor were they posted in any city building. Yengibaryan said he can find no evidence of anyone who attended the public hearing.

“The law provides that hearings are announced a few days before they begin. We opened the ministry’s site only after we learned about the hearings and saw that the information on the hearings planned for February 13 was posted on Feb. 11,” he said.

The Nagin Company has been equally difficult to track down. The address and telephone number for the Armenian company listed with the Ministry of Economy lead to a private mining metallurgy institute that often performs environmental impact studies for such proposals. But no one there knew anything about Nagin. Anonymous sources say the company is owned by the former Minister of Environment, Vartan Ayvazyan, a charge he repeatedly refused to comment on when asked by a This Month reporter.

In the meantime, researchers of the Acopian Center for the Environment at American University of Armenia say exploitation of a mine located close to the town would seriously damage the environment.

The report by the center says: “Iron ores also usually contain reserves of other metals, including copper, chrome, selenium, arsenic metal and others. So, if the company starts extracting the ore, it will endanger the environment causing contamination threatening the town.”

The report also underlined a particular concern over the possible contamination of the air.

“The dust produced by any metal ore industry may cause serious respiratory diseases with the citizens, because of its toxicity. Dust particles are particularly dangerous for people suffering asthma and lung diseases,” reads the report.

Karo Tumoyan, head of the nature protection department at the agency for agriculture and nature protection of Kotayk province administration stated in an interview with This Month, that the regional administration was completely bypassed in this particular project.

“The rules have changed: the consent of the province administration was a must for exploitation of mines before, and we used to require survey results from the head of the community, where the mine site was located,” said Tumoyan. “But in recent years licenses have been granted without asking the opinion of the province administration. We now have no leverage over the process.”

The environmental problems in the town with a population of 60,000 are huge, even before the metal ore plant gets put in place. Hrazdan resident Anush Vardanyan is an organizer at Aarhus and a graduate student whose doctoral dissertation is devoted to the influence of industrial emissions on environment and humans.

She explained the major part of the population in the neighborhood of Hrazdan has been suffering respiratory problems and diseases beginning with the 1970s, when a cement plant was built there.

“If the iron ore is mined, the number of people suffering from cancer will add to those already having various diseases, because the dust of metals is more stable and once getting into the body causes transformations on the cellular level, which can cause cancer,” said Vardanyan.

Thomas Lyman, a senior researcher at the Acopian center AUA and one of the authors of the report, says he knows from his own experience what iron ore mining can do to a town.

“I am from the state of Montana in the U.S. The town of Butte, once known as ‘the richest hill in the world’ and the territory with the largest mining of copper, is contaminated today so much that it is considered as the largest and the most dangerous and toxic area currently being cleaned up in the U.S.,” Lyman said. “The rivers, the brooks, the soil and the woods in the neighborhood of Butte are polluted so much that fishing is dangerous in some areas. The territory now has to be fenced to prohibit people’s entrance there.”

 “I wouldn’t like to see Hrazdan in the same condition,” he continued, “I am concerned with the projected mining enterprise and the potential damage it may cause to the environment and the people.”  -By Ani Matevosyan/This Month Staff Reporter