At a press conference held today, Garineh Danielyan, President of the “Association for Human Sustainable Development” sounding a public warning regarding the future of Lake Sevan. “At issue is the fact that there are mines around Lake Sevan. In the end we will destroy the Sevan beachfront, the tourist industry and agriculture and develop the mining sector instead,” Ms. Danielyan warned. What most worries the environmental community is while ore has been transported from the mines up till now, with the advent of flotation factories, the entire reprocessing process can take place in the Sevan basin itself. The companies to watch out for in this regard are GeoProMining and Gegamet. According to Inga Zarafyan, President of the Ecolur Informational Center, Gegamet has been granted permission to run some mines at Shorzha and Chil but that the company never informed the government that it is preparing to reprocess the ore at the Sevan basin. Ms. Zarafyan claimed that this was the reason that the company was given the green light by the government in the beginning. Ms. Zarafyan stated that she and her colleagues had seen the reprocessing going on and that they had informed the Ministry of Nature Protection. According to her, the ministry merely saw fit to send an inspection team to the area, but that the mines themselves are still operating. She stated that the ministry had stated that the reprocessing itself most likely should take place in Hrazdan. Ms. Danielyan noted that GeoProMining still hadn’t been granted a construction permit for a reprocessing plant at Sevan for the Sotk gold mine. She said that the issue of exploiting the Sotk mine had been reviewed during the Soviet period and that a decision had been reached to extract the ore and transport the ore for reprocessing to Ararat. Now that GeoProMining has purchased the entire facility it has decided not to transport the ore. This decision has provoked the ire of the environmental community and concerned citizens. The “SOS Sevan” initiative group (Eco-Alliance) calls the Armenian authorities in the person of the President of Armenia, RA National Assembly, the Government, National Security Council, as well as all political parties, non-governmental organizations, international community, legal authorities to support the public campaign to save Sevan Lake, one of the major stocks of drinking water of Armenia and the whole Caucasus region, to show good will and make the “GeoProMining” Company stop its illegal activity. “We are appealing to the state authorities to review the contracts with the mentioned company and declare the given licenses invalid”