Emma Sargsyan

Since early times the passion for gold has contained elements bordering on madness. For thousands of years there has been something in its intoxicating luster that has led people to extreme degrees of desire - to possess gold, to hoard it, to fight and kill for it and to control it.

The situation has created a brewing cauldron of conflict between environmentalists and owners of gold production operations. Gold is witnessing a new historic period rife with new possibilities and new dangers.

The raw ore sent to the Ararat recovery plant comes from the Sotk mines located some 20 kilometers from Lake Sevan. In every ton of sand unearthed at the mines there’s .46 grams of gold to be extracted. The raw material is first pulverized and then the gold is filtered out using a cyanide nitrate chemical process.

After the gold is extracted there’s a viscous residue that contains other materials that are diffused throughout the water. This ‘soup’ and other chemical residues are pumped out of the plant through pipes that transport the mass to the tailings dam. Generally, tailings dams come in several sizes, from very large to small. These dams are mostly located on flat areas and can occupy hundreds of hectares. The tailing dam next to the Ararat Plant was constructed during the Soviet era and has been operating ever since.

Professor Pavel Danihelka of the VSB-Technical University in Ostrava, Czech Republic, said that, “Tailings dams serve as a complete depository for the problems connected with the process of gold recovery. If the dams are built incorrectly or located in the wrong spot they can lead to serious environmental consequences.

Armenian environmentalists argue that the tailings dam in the town of Ararat was built too close to the local residential area and that animals from neighboring villages come to the spot to graze.

During our interview Ararat Mayor Abraham Babayan said, “During the past years there have been incidents reported of birds and other animals dropping dead around the dam. If the place is so deadly to animals it’s got to be as dangerous for people as well.”

The cause and effect connection is self-evident. Animals graze on the plant life growing around the tailings dam and people in turn consume the dairy products and meat provided by these same animals.

The plant owners however present the incidents of animals keeling over in another light. Mikayel Kukulyan, who heads the Division of Environmental Affairs at the Armenian Gold Recovery Company (AGRC), states that, “The villagers themselves bring their animal carcasses and dump them by the tailings dam. The former Indian owners of the plant, wishing to avoid a potential scandal, paid off the villagers with money for every dead animal left there.”

According to the experts, the soupy mass that collects in the tailings dam is both toxic and radioactive. Hakob Sanasaryan, President of Armenia’s Greens Union said that, “The dam contains most of the elements in Mendelev’s Periodic Table, in a pulverized form. In fact, it should be noted that these elements are actually more dangerous as dust than in solid ore form.”

Environmentalists claim that when cyanide, lead and other materials are pulverized they become airborne by the wind quite easily and then, when it rains, they fall back to the earth, often settling on rivers and sometimes passing down to underground water tables. Tailings dams, if managed correctly, can be operated for many years. The environmentalists say that it’s better to operate the same tailing dam in order not to destroy additional lands.

Mr. Mikayel Kukulyan said, “We’re not planning to build a new tailings dam. Rather, we’re more inclined to enlarge and expand the existing one”. They face a problem however in doing so since a number of fish hatcheries have been built around the dam.

Plant owners are preoccupied with the question of how to get their hands on these adjacent lands since the dam was built a long time ago and these areas were also included in the original project’s boundaries. But the local residents are concerned that the fish hatcheries that are located quite close to the tailings dam might be adversely affected.

Marzpet Qamalyan, Deputy Head of the State Environmental Inspectorate of the Ministry of Nature Protection, said, “The thing is not to allow an accident-prone situation to be created. The land must be restored to an agricultural state and the underground aquifers must not be contaminated.

The experts say that it’s almost no longer possible to render the tailings dam harmless or to restore it to a bucolic setting. Back in the Soviet period the cyanide was neutralized through the use of chlorine, i.e. hypo-chloride, which tends to desiccate the land rendering it infertile. Later on, at the end of the 1990’s, when the ownership of the plant was constantly changing, they also used chlorine to neutralize the cyanide. But not many people talk about this matter now.

“They simply forced us to use chlorine since it was an industrial by-product of the Nairi Chemical Plant.” Mikayel Kukulyan stated. Environmentalists say that while accumulated cyanide in the soil disintegrates over time while chlorine doesn’t breakdown. Chlorine is used to neutralize cyanide only in the former Soviet Union countries where outmoded technologies still exist. Factory representatives say that during the days when the AGRC was using chlorine to neutralize cyanide the rest of the world was using an oxidation process (sulfur dioxide) to perform the same task, as it was more effective and less risky.

Mr. Kukulyan said, “Chlorine was available here while the oxidizing agents had to be imported from overseas. We were ready to make this change since chlorine is pretty weak. Thus we had to use quite a bit of the stuff which opens up a can of worms in its own.”

Environmentalists say that proper management of a tailings dam entails that it be insulated on the bottom and gave a strong bulwark. Mr. Sanasaryan said, “If we are attentive we see that the bottom of this tailings dam isn’t insulated an the bulwark is a mere earthen embankment. The bulwark has to be strong enough to withstand quite powerful earthquake shocks.”

AGRC employees state that there haven’t been any industrial accidents in the past few years. In 2005, however, the media reported that, “There have been at least 10 accidents at the plant within the past five years. On several occasions the extraction pipes transporting wastes to the tailings dam were damaged resulting in a wave of cyanide soup engulfing neighboring vegetable hothouses and killing off cows and fish stocks. The last such incident occurred on November 28, 2004, when cyanide-laced water flooded the 4,600 square meter vineyard of Suren Margaryan. (AGRC Intent on Polluting). After the story broke in the press the plant owners settled with the landowner to avoid any further negative publicity. The drain catches running under the pipes were never repaired after the accident.

The owners of the plant stated that, “The AGRC is not open to public visits; it is necessary to follow a certain protocol.” They explain this no-nonsense approach of theirs by stating that the plant is their home and no one has the right to enter without authorization. In order to receive such permission one must enter into lengthy bureaucratic negotiations with the ROA Ministry of Nature Protection.

In November 2007, after lengthy deliberations with the Ministry, specialists attached to the United Nations Environmental Project were only granted permission to view the tailings dam and to speak with representatives of the plant. Fritz Balkon, who came to Armenia to study local exisiti9ng gold recovery technologies and to assist the government in coming up with ways to reduce the risks and accidents associated with this industrial sector, said that, “These plants intend to implement serious technical modifications to their operations.”

Austrian specialist Philip Pek noted that, “The technologies currently in operation at that Ararat plant are simply not acceptable.” Once about every 20-30 years the technologies and methodologies employed must be reviewed so that the reprocessed ores can undergo additional reprocessing.

Mr. Fritz Balkon stated, “The raw material can be reprocessed 2-3 times as it is not possible to recover all the gold after just one extraction process. Secondly, each additional extraction process attempts to use lesser amounts of cyanide to get the job done.”

According to the international experts the materials collected in the tailings dam can be reprocessed at least 3-4 times. The AGRC representatives told the experts that they reprocess the dam materials an average of 2.5 times. Afterwards, we were informed by AGRC that the ores are reprocessed an additional two times.