Three Arijt Quarries were Exempted from the EIA Process for the Kars-Iğdır-Aralık-Dilucu Railway Project

Within the scope of the Kars-Iğdır-Aralık-Dilucu High Standard Railway Project, three borrow pits planned in the Aşağı District of Iğdır's Tuzluca district have brought the 25 hectare limit in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) to the agenda. The areas of the three quarries with permit numbers 76/2026-01, 76/2026-02 and 76/2026-03 belonging to the General Directorate of Infrastructure Investments were determined as 9.80, 9.92 and 9.94 hectares, respectively.

Thus, the total size of the three fields reached 29.66 hectares.

While preparing a project introduction file (PTD) instead of an EIA report for all three projects, the projects were evaluated within the scope of "extraction of minerals not included in the Annex-1 list" in the Annex-2 list of the EIA Regulation.

In the regulation, open enterprises of 25 hectares and above are included in Annex-1 and an EIA report must be prepared. The projects were approved as they are.

'NOT INDEPENDENT'

The most striking detail in the files was the cumulative impact assessments, which showed that the projects were not independent of each other. In the air quality modeling of the first project, number 76/2026-01, the other two pits were shown as "neighboring" projects. The crushing-screening-washing facility planned within the scope of the railway was also included in the same study.

The coordinates also reveal that the fields are adjacent to each other. The three projects belong to the same investor, will provide materials for the construction of the same railway, and separate raw material production permits were issued for all three of them by the Iğdır Special Provincial Administration on February 5, 2026. The presentation date of PTDs was September 2026. It is planned to extract 800 thousand tons of material per year in each quarry, a total of 2.4 million tons of material annually in three fields, and 12 million tons of material in five years.

It is stated that all of the material will be used in the same railway project. This table raised the question of why three adjacent areas planned for the same purpose, with a total area exceeding 25 hectares, were not included in the EIA process as a single project.