Locals Determined to Find an Alternative to Mining Residents of Vayots Dzor Determined to Find an Alternative to Mining The village of Gndevaz, located 35 km from Yeghegnadzor and 15 km from Jermuk, is separated from the current territory of Lydian Armenia by only one road
It is on three points of that road that the residents of Gndevaz and neighboring villages have come together and decided to stop the operations. However, everything has had its backstory; Lydian Armenia received the license to mine Amulsar in 2009. This license was renewed in 2012, however it was only after the next licensing cycle in 2016 that it started to move in heavy machinery and begin demolition works.
And it was at this exact moment that residents understood that not everything was as it should be.
“Heavy dust would settle on the windows of cars when they starting using dynamite to blow out the mountain. The pollution was so bad that tourists stopped coming,” says 31 year old Tigran Manukyan, a physical education teacher from Jermuk.
Another reason for the disillusionment of locals is the fact that of the promised 1700 jobs that were to be created at the mine, there were only 200 and the rest were contracted out to third parties.
Manukyan says that even those 200 jobs were offered at salaries lower than promised and to top it off, as a result of the mine’s operations, three resorts were shut down, leaving more than 200 people without a job. “The villagers also suffered,” Manukyan says. “They could no longer sell their produce to those resorts.”
The patience of residents finally ran out when in May 2018, pipes were damaged twice because of the negligence of the workers of Lydian.
“There were six traffic accidents because of their workers. In other words, they are not adhering to basic norms/laws, how can we expect them to operate a mine?” Manukyan asks and adds that if this damage is being incurred before the mine starts full out operations, what should they be prepared for after?
Aharon Arsenyan, 24, remembers how the Arpa River also fell victim to the mine in 2018. “Last year was the first time that Arpa was polluted. Experts found large deposits of clay in the river...Such a thing had never happened before, the river was crystal clear, the cleanest in Armenia,” Arsenyan insists. “Then it was revealed that it was because of construction works; the topsoil was removed and the clay layer was simply thrown into the river.”
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