ArmInfo. There are 49 abandoned mines and t tailing dumps in Armenia. Minister of the Environment Erik Grigoryan reported this to journalists on October 17 after a government meeting.
According to Grigoryan, the ministry, where restoration will be carried out as a priority, allocated 10 of them. Today, the Environment Ministry is seeking financing for the corresponding design estimates.
Meanwhile, as the Minister pointed out, a catastrophic situation has already developed in some places. "People are conducting economic activities on the territory of the abandoned tailing dump. Meanwhile, being there is already dangerous for humans," he said.
The Ministry of the Environment was thinking about developing a new procedure for the restoration of mines and tailing dumps. Until today, as Grigoryan pointed out, the process was only that the mine was covered with earth. Now the ministry plans to begin the process of biological reclamation in order to make these lands suitable for future use. WB experts, as the Minister said, will provide the guidebook.
It should be noted that in the National Report of the Ministry of Nature Protection "On the state of the environment for 2002", tailing dumps also had hazard rate. Three hazardous tailing dumps had the 1st hazard rate: Three hazardous tailing dumps had the 1st hazard rate: Ararat Cyanide, owned by Geopromining Gold; Geghanush tailing dump, containing copper, lead, zinc and gold, owned by Dundee Precious Metals Kapan; and the Nahatak tailing dump, owned by the Akhtala Ore Processing Plant.
According to the new RA Code "On Subsoil", since 2011, tailings have ceased to be considered hazardous waste, and are considered as secondary deposits of technogenic origin. Therefore, they are not taxed. After the adoption of amendments to the Code "On Subsoil" in 2016, the concept of a tailing dump turned into a category of waste. That is, if earlier part of the waste from mining activities after making an economic assessment could be considered as technogenic deposits, then the new code of tailing dumps and other production dumps are considered solely as objects of subsoil use waste, and the substances contained in them - whether it be concentrates or tailings etc. - waste.Meanwhile, in the scientific work published in 2014, "Priority Tasks Associated with RA Tailing Drumps" (authors R. S. Movsesyan, A. I. Movsisyan, Department of Prospecting and Exploration of Mineral Deposits of Yerevan State University), it was noted that due to mining activities territories in an area of over 8 thousand hectares have been violated in Armenia. Another 1,500 hectares of land under the tailing dumps have been withdrawn from circulation, about 1 billion tons of mining enterprises waste has been accumulated there. And the most dangerous, according to the authors of the report, are precisely the accumulations of tailing dumps, then dumps of off-balance ores and smelter slag.