Armenia turns into toxic waste landfill Review by Caliber.Az

Regardless of attempts to halt the collapse of the Armenian chemical industry, the sector in crisis for decades, has disappeared forever. All efforts to attract portfolio investors to upgrade the Nairit and Vanadzor chemical enterprises, which still use outdated technologies of the 1960s, were unsuccessful.

The situation is aggravated by the storage of thousands of tons of hazardous substances on the territory of the collapsing Nairit plant, the Nubarashen landfill, and in other storage facilities for waste and pesticides. The other day, specialists from the Russian state corporation Rosatom and the Federal Environmental Operator (FEO) visited Armenia to discuss the prospects for neutralizing the chemical storage facilities of the Land of Stones, which is approaching an environmental disaster.

The chemical industry of Armenia, formed during the Soviet years, developed through centralized subsidies and the supply of a significant part of raw materials and reagents from other Soviet republics, as well as in terms of subsidizing transport logistics, energy, etc.

The chemical products produced in the republic were mainly used for the needs of the entire Soviet Union, however, enterprises that had not been modernized for a long period had a relatively low profitability, and by the end of the 1980s, they were completely operating in a planned unprofitable mode.

After Armenia gained independence, its chemical industry found itself in a transport and logistics dead end, completely losing profitability due to the lack of its own raw materials and the high cost of its imports. The wear and tear and technological obsolescence of equipment, as well as the colossal debt of the Armenian chemical plants, had no less effect.

As a result, the largest chemical enterprise in Armenia, the Nairit plant, which in the past produced dozens of chemicals, including synthetic rubber and a number of acids, after serious problems in the 1990s and in the zero years, finally closed in 2010, after the country sold it to Rhinoville.

However, instead of reconstruction, this cunning investor, with carefully concealed names of the owners, played out a classic scheme for the withdrawal of funds in line with the post-Soviet realities. A loan was taken from the CIS Interstate Bank, allegedly for the modernization of the enterprise, which, of course, was not repaid. In contrast, Rhinoville left several tens of millions of dollars in debt on the plant's balance sheet.

The situation was also aggravated due to the significant public debt of Nairit, as well as tax debts worth 10 billion drams. As a result, in 2015, the plant was declared bankrupt and returned to the state, however, production did not resume due to the extreme deterioration of equipment and the complete destruction of technological cycles.

Subsequently, all valuable equipment, as well as two hundred tons of pipes, tanks, and plates made of a very expensive nickel-based special alloy, were sold for next to nothing as scrap.

A similar fate befell another large industrial enterprise, Vanadzor-Khimprom: the plant was closed during the presidency of Robert Kocharyan, and then declared bankrupt in 2015.

As it turned out later, the company Rainoville Property Limited, registered in London, came into the spotlight there, at the initiative of which loans were taken allegedly for modernization, and then the investor evaporated, leaving debts of $41 million to the chemical plant. Today, on the territory of the chemical plant with an area of over 100 hectares, there are only dilapidated buildings and metal columns.

In Armenia, with its flawed economy, they have long been accustomed to the "cutting" of the Soviet legacy and other criminal perversions of the authorities, and no one would have remembered the robbed and abandoned chemical plants if not for one "but".

Due to the lack of funding, the Nairit complex in Yerevan is not guarded by anyone, the remnants of equipment and raw materials are periodically plundered there, but worst of all, the plant poses a huge environmental hazard to residents of the capital. Warehouses with substances of a high degree of danger are destroyed, which, without proper control, can spontaneously ignite or explode.

Such a dangerous incident already happened about six years ago, when the chemical substance ethinol with a total volume of about 200 cubic meters caught fire in the dilapidated Nairit 1 storage facilities, and several firefighters were injured while extinguishing the workshops.

A very difficult environmental situation is also observed at Vanadzor-Khimprom, where ammonia is still stored in abandoned tanks, and in general, the territory of a dilapidated enterprise located near residential areas poses a danger from the point of view of chemical waste residues.

In addition, in Armenia, in addition to numerous industrial waste dumps, including those inherited from Nairit and other chemical facilities of the Soviet era, there is also a temporary repository of pesticides, where about 20 years ago, obsolete pesticides, manufactured half a century ago, were buried in a concrete bunker.

Technologies for storing hazardous reagents at these landfills are not observed at all. In general, in the "land of stones", with its copper-molybdenum mines and processing plants, there are 23 tailings (facilities intended for the disposal of radioactive, toxic, and other waste from processing plants), of which eight are closed, and 15 are operating. Most of these facilities are in Syunik and Lori regions.

According to experts from relevant world organizations, the vast majority of these tailings do not meet international standards and are not intended for operation in the conditions of seismic activity in Armenia. Emissions of toxic substances into the transboundary Okhchuchay River from the territory of the Armenian Zangazur copper-molybdenum plant and the adjacent tailing dump can be cited as an example. Okhchuchay feeds the most important river of the region - Araz and flows through the territory of Azerbaijan.

IAEA specialists and other specialized international structures have long recognized Armenia as a state with great environmental risks, given the presence of the emergency Metsamor nuclear power plant on its territory. Moreover, in the event of a strong earthquake or fire, the risks of an ecological catastrophe in the area around the abandoned Armenian chemical plants are very high.

However, even without destructive natural and man-made disasters, in the process of slow depressurization of toxic waste storage facilities, not only Armenian lands and water sources, but also the ecology of neighbouring countries connected with Armenia by transboundary rivers, etc. can be affected by them.

Therefore, today for this country, it is not so many attempts to revive chemical products that are relevant, but the disposal of hazardous chemicals and the reconstruction of collapsing tailings. Against this background, the hopes of the Armenian government to create a cluster for the processing of chemicals and medical waste at the facilities of Nairit look extremely unconvincing.

Similar initiatives were discussed this spring with the Russian state corporation Rosatom, which is also promoting a project to neutralize hazardous substances at the Nairit plant and other polygons of the republic. However, the complexity of the task here is due to the fact that Rosatom intends to act not as an investor, but as a contractor for the project, counting on funding from the Armenian budget, the scarcity of which is unlikely to provide for tangible injections into the environmental sphere.

“To what extent, Armenia will agree to implement our solutions in their problem areas is a question to a greater extent for the Armenian government. We are ready to share our experience, we are ready to tell how we approach the liquidation of such facilities,” Stanislav Zhabrikov, Advisor to the First Deputy General Director for the Implementation of Environmental Projects at the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Federal Environmental Operator (FEO) of the Russian Federation, said recently.

It is also impossible to involve the private sector in such environmental projects: the uncertainty of local businesses in the effective operation of state institutions in the long term is exacerbated by the lack of foreign portfolio investors and the unwillingness of entrepreneurs operating in the republic to reinvest profits in the modernization and expansion of business ventures, including in the mining sector.