BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 19. Iran blames Armenia for contaminating the Araz river (running along Türkiye, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran) for a long time, said Isa Bozorgzadeh, an official of Iran's Water Resources Management Company, Trend reports.
The official stressed that Iran had warned Armenia and the copper mine operator before.
He also said that Iran’s pressure made them build dams to store the mining waste. But the high energy costs in Armenia made the contractor break the law and dump the waste into the rivers.
Bozorgzadeh said that keeping the water quality in any part of the country and not letting waste go into rivers was a very important rule of the Ministry of Energy of Iran. So they always check everywhere in the country.
The Okchuchay and Kharchevan rivers that go through Armenia’s land join the Araz river. The copper-molybdenum factory and gold mine in Armenia put their waste into these rivers. So the land and water in the area are very dirty and unsafe. The Araz river is a river that crosses many countries, so it is also hurting the environment in Iran and Azerbaijan.
The pollution of the Araz river by Armenia has been a long-standing issue that has attracted international attention and intervention. The European Union, which is a signatory to the Espoo Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context, sent an observer mission to monitor the situation in Arazdayan, where a large metallurgical plant was being built by Armenia and the US near the border with Azerbaijan. The plant was expected to produce 180,000 tons of copper and molybdenum products per year, but it also posed a serious threat to the environment and health of millions of people in the region.
The EU mission reported that it saw the dismantling of the plant and its relocation to a new site after Azerbaijan and Iran protested against the project and demanded that Armenia comply with the Espoo Convention. However, this report was later deleted from the mission’s Twitter account and replaced by a vague statement about patrolling the area. This raised doubts about the credibility and impartiality of the EU mission and suggested that it was under pressure from Armenia to change its report and downplay the issue.
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