“EcoLur” Informational NGO has sent a letter to Nature Protection Ministry, which says, “Meghradzor resort zone turned out to be in the epicenter of hazardous project implementation – cyanic plant, Meghradzor gold mine opencast development and Tezhsar nepheline-syenite mine.

As EcoLur learnt, on 25 December Nature Protection Minister intends to meet with the administration of Alumina Corporation on the issue of Tezhsar nepheline-syenite mine. The company is persistently holding public hearings and displays project documents, which don’t comply with the existing extremely weak standards of environmental expertise.

Meanwhile the Nature Protection Ministry accepts documentation and recognized the hearings as lawful. Moreover, though the company didn’t turn up at the hearings it organized in May, the Ministry is ready to recognize these hearings lawful as well. The last discussion was held on 21 December, and the public recognized it unlawful.

Another hazardous project planned to be implemented in Meghradzor Village is the construction project of cyanic plant on gold extraction submitted by Meghradzor Gold Company – Director and Owner Vardan Margaryan, project developer – Hovik Nikaghosyan, Head of Environmental Department of “Lernametalurgiakan Institute”.

Public hearings were held twice - on 5 and 17 December.

Nevertheless, Vardan Margaryan and Village Head Karlen Hovhannisyan gathered the villagers on 23 December without making any prior statements and told them that the project doesn’t bear any risks and they considered this meeting to be the third public hearings. Two days before, on 21 Decemberm Meghradzor villagers met with EcoLur in Hrazdan and expressed their concerns that, as a matter of fact, risks exist and asked us to help them to organize public hearings with an invited expert. The Village Head interfered into the conversation and told EcoLur that talks about risks is misinformation.

Then, on 23 December, there was a phone call from Meghradzor to EcoLur, where the villagers said that pressure was exercised on them and neither the village head nor the director wanted to discuss the project with invited organizations.

“We proposed to organize a voting among the villagers, but the company director didn’t agree. None of our proposals was accepted. When we asked to hold public hearings with invited NGOs, we were told that meeting was a public hearing and that the company has its own experts,” the villagers told us.

We do know their names, but we don’t publish them on their request for safety reasons. The problem is that ordinary employees of the company are involved in the clash of interests, who think that farmers want to deprive them of their work.

EcoLur thinks that the process of public discussions on these very projects passed into non-transparency stage, personal arrangements and high pressure on public and local villagers, which is fraught with high corruption risks and law violations.

We call for Nature Protection Ministry and personally Minister Aram Harutyunyan, who bears service and political responsibility, to take the process of public discussion on these given projects out of private talks, to make them transparent, to give thorough expert assessment and to organize official public hearings, where the opinion of invited experts, villagers and independent experts will be taken into consideration together with all existing risks.

We also inform Nature Protection Ministry that closed development of Meghradzor mine has long been changed to opencast development. In this regard, we consider it necessary to carry out the examination of Meghradzor Gold Company documentation submitted for environmental expertise on changing development method of Meghradzor gold mine.

We would like to ask to provide the following documents: announcement about holding public hearings, the opinion of stakeholders, timeframes of holding public hearings, providing information about opencast development and the opinion of the environmental expertise.”

“Ecolur” Informational NGO