Some 200 residents of Yeghvard, a town of some 10,000 in Armenia’s Kotayk Province, closed the main roadway to Yerevan today to protest the planned construction of an oil reprocessing plant.

The protesters say the plant, being built by ArmOil CJSC,  poses serious health and environmental risks to the area and local inhabitants.

Workers from a nearby water bottling factory joined the protest, saying they are concerned that exhausts from the reprocessing plant would lead to the closing of their facility, leaving them jobless.

Calls by the local police chief to open the road to one-way traffic have gone unheeded.