Author: Arpi Talalian

Naira Badalian. The initiative “SOS Sevan” addressed an open letter to the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, asking to withdraw the bill approved by the government on additional water releases from the lake.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, members of the initiative expressed great concern about the bill. As they noted, the discussions organized on behalf of the Prime Minister, in fact, did not have the nature of public discussions, the issue of the appropriateness of using strategic water supplies for irrigation purposes was not submitted for public discussion, and representatives of the initiative and experts were not informed about the discussions. The authors of the letter remind that the lack of water is indicated as a justification for additional water withdrawal from Sevan. At the same time, there is no information on the illegal use of water from the Sevan-Hrazdan system, the water volumes provided to the fish farms of the Ararat region, excess water intake, program”.

The members of the initiative consider unconvincing the government’s statements that the profit from the sale of electricity generated as a result of additional releases will be directed to the modernization of the irrigation system Sevan-Hrazdan, which, in the long run, will be designed to reduce losses in the system. In 2017 additional discharges were made in the amount of 170 million cubic meters, and the generated by the sale of electricity 1645139600.0 drams were not spent for these purposes, and the funds are planned to be directed to the budget.

Proceeding from the above, “SOS Sevan” appeals to the Prime Minister with a request to withdraw the bill and hold hearings with the participation of all interested parties. It should be noted that on August 23 the Armenian government approved a draft law on amendments and additions to the law on the approval of annual events and comprehensive programs for the restoration, protection, reproduction and use of the Lake Sevan ecosystem. The project provides for increasing water releases from the lake from 170 million cubic meters of water in 2018 to 210 million cubic meters. In the beginning of the discussion, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the issue is one of the most problematic, and the decision was preceded by a month and a half of discussions. “The discussions were stormy and it became clear from their results that there are real risks of creating a deadlock for agriculture,” Pashinyan said, adding that the situation is deadlocked for the authorities. “Unfortunately, the irrigation system causes a lot of questions, and we must provide answers to these questions. It is necessary to understand how true the statements about the existence, as the press like to say, of the “water mafia”. If this is so, then it is unequivocal that it should capitulate as soon as possible, “he said. The draft law will be submitted to the parliament for approval on August 28th.

On July 17, 2017, the National Assembly of Armenia approved the law on increasing the volumes of water discharge from Lake Sevan from 170 million cubic meters up to 270 million cubic meters. The reason for this decision was the fact that the water basins in the country are not full. The Ministry of Nature Protection of Armenia opposed the proposal to increase the water intake from Sevan, and independent experts unanimously reiterated that lowering the water level in Sevan will lead to irreversible consequences due to the intensification of the waterlogging process. According to the ecologist, specialist for water resources Knarik Hovhannisyan, the Armenian government asks to increase the releases every year, arguing this with a deficit of irrigation water, in fact only about 25% of the water from Sevan reaches the farmers, the remaining 70% is lost. Nevertheless, the law was adopted, which, as expected, was reflected at the level of Lake Sevan.

According to official data, in 2017 water intake totaled 266.757 million cubic meters of water, instead of the envisaged 270 million cubic meters. As a result, already at the beginning of the current season of holidays, ecologists began to signal about the problem of Sevan fouling by algae, which, according to experts, is due not only to a high temperature background, scanty precipitation, the dumping of extremely polluted waters into the basins of the country and the lack of water treatment stations, but also to last year’s additional in the water.

As the chairman of the NGO “Association for Sustainable Development” Karine Danielyan recently said, today’s state of Lake Sevan is not an accident. “I take it like a lake cry for help, we have been sounding alarm for years: if we continue to treat Sevan like this, instead of a lake we will have a swamp, and water will not be suitable even for irrigation.” Now we are faced with this problem. The active reproduction of blue-green algae is an indicator that the lake is actively approaching water logging.In that part of the water where there is active flowering, there are also poisonous substances, “she noted. The ecologist indicated that Lake Sevan has been in conflict with the flowering process since 1964, every 2-3 years, but never the scale was the same as now. Karine Danielyan explained that the flowering in the lake is due to several factors: biological, lack of physicochemical water treatment stations, these stations failed after the collapse of the USSR, as well as a decrease in the water level in the lake and high air temperature. “Every year, we raise the issue of inadmissibility of solving irrigation problems at the expense of water releases from Lake Sevan.” If we lose Sevan, we will lose Armenia, “added K. Danielyan.