Amulsar Mining Risks ‘Manageable,’ Insists Top Investigator

Asked what will happen if those risks turn out to be serious after the start of open-pit mining at Amulsar, Ivanyan said Armenia’s laws allow authorities to monitor and ensure Lydian’s compliance with environmental regulations.

Pashinyan Tours Communities Close To Blocked Mining Site

Pashinyan sought to reassure residents of the resort town of Jermuk and two villages located close to the Amulsar gold deposit in southeastern Armenia as he visited their communities on Friday.

Pashinyan told them that the British-registered company Lydian International will not be allowed to launch mining operations there if they are deemed to pose a serious threat to the environment. He also announced that he will seek additional explanations from the Lebanese consulting firm ELARD that has conducted an independent environmental audit of the Amulsar project.

ELARD’s final report submitted Armenia’s Investigative Committee was made public two weeks ago. According to its key conclusions presented by the law-enforcement body, toxic waste from the would-be mine is extremely unlikely to contaminate mineral water sources in Jermuk or rivers and canals flowing into Lake Sevan.

“I have decided that next Thursday or Friday we will hold a video conference with ELARD’s team of experts during which we will say that ‘there is a big debate in Armenia over what you wrote [in the report] and that you yourself must now present your conclusions,” he said. “All that conversation will be filmed and made public.”

Pashinyan said he will press the Lebanese environmental consultants to give “clear-cut answers” to lingering questions about the safety of Lydian’s project.

“If it emerges that our water, our air, our soil and our grass will indeed be polluted then the mine will not be allowed to operate,” he declared. “But if it emerges that the only problem is that one will see some rooftop from their window then it will be a different situation which we will discuss.”

Several dozen protesters have blocked all roads leading to Amulsar since June 2018, disrupting the construction of Lydian’s mining facilities which was due to be completed by the end of last year. The protesters say that gold mining and smelting operations would severely damage the local ecosystem.

Lydian, which has invested at least $350 million in the project, dismisses these concerns, saying that it will use modern and safe technology. The company headquartered in the US state of Colorado has repeatedly demanded that the Armenian government end what it regards as an illegal road blockade.

The government contracted ELARD early this year. Pashinyan and other officials said then that Lydian’s renewed operations in Armenia will depend on the results of the ELARD audit.

While in Jermuk, Pashinyan also discussed the Amulsar issue with other ordinary residents of Armenia’s most famous mineral water resort. In particular, we went into the apartment of a middle-aged woman who claimed to have lived in the United States for about 27 years and returned to her hometown recently. She urged Pashinyan to pull the plug on the mining project.

“I came back to live in an ecologically clean place,” she said. “I want this clean and untouched nature to be really preserved. Watching this nature gives me great pleasure.”

Lydian and its Armenian building contractors employed more than 1,000 people until the start of the Amulsar blockade. Many of them were residents of the surrounding communities.