Nature Protection Ministry and Energy and Natural Resources Ministry of Armenia don’t deal with the seismic safety of the tailing dumps, mines and toxic dumps in Armenia. The Ministries informed about this in reply to "EcoLur” enquiry on who would assess the seismic vulnerability of 15 tailing dumps, 400 developed mines and million tons of toxic dumps operating in Armenia and to which extent the seismic safety of these objects are ensured, whether the evaluation of seismic vulnerability are submitted in the development of new mines (for example, Teghout copper and molybdenum mine, Amoulsar gold mine development project) or in mining expansion projects (for example, Sotq gold mine, Qajaran copper and molybdenum mine, Shahumyan gold mine).
It should be mentioned that Energy and Natural Resources Ministry of Armenia made a reference it its letter to Article 7 of RA Code "On Soil”, which says that soil management projects are subject to state expert assessment and soil management permits are issued in case of the positive opinion of the expert assessment. In its reply Nature Protection Ministry makes a link to Article 50 of RA Code "On Soil”, where the requirements of a natural resource mining project are laid down. The abovementioned two articles contain no clause about seismic safety.
EcoLur sent the aforementioned enquiry to the Ministry of Emergency States as well, nevertheless, no reply has been sent so far.
