Residents on a stretch of Komitas Avenue in Yerevan are up in arms about the looming health risks posed by the construction of a tramway/trolleybus high voltage substation in their backyard.

At the 1,000 square meter site, a company called Liber Ltd. Has already broken ground for the substation and a 13 story residential building.

An electric substation has existed at the location for the past 50 years. Residents claim that mercury aggregates at the station has caused a variety of cancers in residents living in the adjoining buildings.

The existing unit is already walled off at a distance of 20 meters from the nearest building.

To build the proposed apartment building, the new substation will either have to be erected quite close to the building or either be constructed underground.

Yerevan Electro-Transport says that the new station poses no health risks and that, in fact, mercury was never used at the old unit.

This raises the ire of local resident Sousanna Terzyan. She told me that according to her statistics there have been one or two members of each family in Building #5a that have come down with tumours and died.

"Given all this, they now want to move the new substation even closer to our building or build it underground, which is even more risky," Mrs. Terzyan noted.

According to documents at the Arabkir Real Estate Registry (Cadastre), the site had been leased to Yerevan Electro-Transport by former Yerevan Mayor Yervand Zakharyan. In 2005, the land was registered in the name of Liber Ltd.

The director of Liber Ltd. is Keshish Abram. Residents say they've heard he is an Iranian-Armenian. The local gossip also purports that the company is actually run by Sashik Sargsyan, brother of President Serzh Sargsyan.

Sedrak Baghdasaryan, who runs a civic organization that protects the legal rights of citizens in "eminent domain" cases, says that it is likely that Liber Ltd. Paid off certain government officials for the right to build at the site.

"Pay us the money and do what you want. That's how things work here in Armenia," said a frustrated Mr. Baghdasaryan.

Resident Terzyan said they knew nothing of the proposed construction until one day last year when some men came round saying they were Liber representatives.

"They showed up and said they were planning to build here. But we are all against it," she said, adding that a petition signed by 100 local residents opposed to the construction has been sent to President Sargsyan.

"This was a green space with leafy trees. Last August they cut down 10 trees. We protested and some officials from the Ministry of the Environment came. They fined the company for cutting down 5 trees. That's the extent of the oversight," said Gohar Sargsyan, another local resident.

On July 28, 2010, former Yerevan Mayor Gagik Beglaryan awarded a construction permit to Liber Ltd., duly signed and stamped.

When Heritage Party MP Larisa Alaverdyan requested a copy of the permit from the Yerevan Municipality what she was sent was a document that lacked any signature and stamp. The permit numbers are different but the text is the same.

It also turns out that Beglaryan granted Liber Ltd. a construction permit three months before an expert technical study was conducted as required.

Last month, residents sent a petition to the RA Chief Prosecutor, asking that his office look into the involvement of the former mayor in this illegal construction matter.

After resident publicly protested about the tress being cut, Liber suspended work at the site.

During the lull, the Ministry of Health declared that potentially harmful noise levels emanating from the new substation were not taken into account. The ministry thus proposed that the unit be placed at least 10 meters from Building #5a and that noise buffers be installed.

Another government agency, the Ministry of Urban Development, also got involved. Last October the ministry informed residents that a document had been forwarded to the mayor stating that "the planned construction of a multi-unit building and an electric transport substation would violate construction code standards regarding the distances between structures."

Mrs. Sousanna Sargsyan says that residents believed that the illegal construction would come to a halt after the selection of new Yerevan Mayor Karen Karapetyan.

"He made all these wonderful promises and all. Then one day this May the bulldozers came and destroyed all the remaining trees. People from the Environment Ministry showed up again. They said that the company could do what it wants since the land belongs to them."

To make a long story short, the Yerevan Municipality and Liber got together to resolve some of the residents' concerns.

In the end, Liber Ltd. has agreed to scale down the width of the new residential building and to build the substation underground.

This hasn't mollified local residents one iota.

"It's still illegal what Liber is doing. And they have contracted with a company called Rem Group to perform the actual work. This is a firm that was stripped of its operating license in the energy sector," Mrs. Gohar Sargsyan said.

Residents have taken their case to the Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytoun Administrative court seeking a work stoppage order.

The court has issued the injunction.

"Sure the court has issued the temporary work stoppage but we really don't see this as a long-term solution. The people behind the construction have gotten this far without proper documentation and permits. In the end, they can get away with just about anything," said Mrs. Terzyan.