The mayor of Akunk, a village in Armenia’s Kotayk province, has issued a permit to Gagik Tsarukyan’s charitable foundation to build a water pipeline leading to the summit of Mt. Hatis.

Gagik Tsarukyan, a prominent businessman and leader of the Prosperous Armenia party, wants to build a 33-meter statue of Jesus Christ atop Mt. Hatis, some thirty kilometers northeast of Yerevan. 

Akunk Mayor Hunan Rubenyan signed the road permit on July 25. Akunk lies at the foot of the mountain.

The foundation has purchased large plots of land on Mt. Hatis recently at rock bottom prices.

The Armenian government has given a preliminary green-light for the project. Earlier this month, PM Nikol Pashinyan was quoted as saying that the 33-meter-tall statue would be a boon for tourism.

On July 12, Armenia’s National Academy of Sciences weighed in on the controversy, saying that the Armenian government, in 2008, recognized the extinct Hatis volcano as a geological monument where any construction work must be preceded by a detailed engineering-geological survey and that seismic risk assessments must also be conducted in the case of large structures.