Two days ago “Yerevan Water Supply Company” (YWSC) made a statement reading that water supply of Kentron community of Yerevan will be stopped at 12:00 till 18:00 because “Armenian Electric Networks” company will cut off the electricity.
Certainly, such situations happen, but the important thing is not that water supply will be suspended for six hours. The most important thing is the reasons. This statement would not be so important to us if we did not know about a fact. Several years ago, during the first phase of water supply system improvement program the pumps of Yerevan had to be replaced with automatic systems. The purpose was to cut down the capacity of energy use in Yerevan water supply system. The pumps used much energy. This was the reason why the YWSC had so many debts in that period. One of the main components of the Yerevan water supply system improvement program was to replace the pumps with automatic systems to save energy. Besides that, the automatic water supply system will be secure since it will not depend on energy supply. As for the pump station of Garni, according to our information works were started to replace the pumps far during the Soviet period. A hill was dug to provide the automatic flow of water and event tubes were installed there. However, the works were stopped. The lessee of YWSC, Italian company “A Utility” has planned to finish that work too. It is worth mentioning that most part of Kentron community of Yerevan is supplied by the mentioned Garni water supply system. According to the information of the NA commission on controlling the effectiveness of foreign grants and aids, the company has spent 245, 87 and 81 thousand dollar during three phases of the implementation project. In March, 2004, when the works of “A Utility” were going to be finished, British engineer Bruce Tasker and an expert from YWSC, Arthur Petrosyan, went to see the works implemented at the Garni pump station. According to Tasker, on the way A. Petrosyan assured him that the station had been reconstructed, and instead of using pumps water could reach Yerevan automatically without using such system. However, upon arriving it turned out that such assurances were not true and that the station provided water supply by using pumps. Where was that money spent? We don’t know anything about that. Besides that, “A Utility” assures that they have bought a lot of facilities and spare parts for the Garni pump station. If the station can provide water supply automatically, why do they need so many facilities and spare parts? In a word, concerning the Garni pump station the mentioned company has given contradicting information and shown that thousands have been spent on such works, indeed the situation is the same.
According to the technical report submitted to the commission, the pump station of Garni uses 169 kwt energy per hour to pump up water. Basing on this number, let’s calculate how much energy the pump station may use approximately. Let’s also assume that the pump station may stop for a couple of hours during a day and that it works 20 hours per day. Accordingly, the pump station of Garni works for about 600 hours each month and spends 101.400 kwt energy. According to the information provided by YWSC, the pump station does not get energy from distribution networks, but from high voltage stations and pays 17.32 dram per 1 kwt. Thus, the pump station of Garni spends about 1.800 thousand dram. We don’t understand why the pump station of Garni works with pumps and spends such huge money after having spent so much money on technical works. To note, one of the violations within the first Armenian water supply project, which have been submitted to American organization GAP, concerns the pump station of Garni and the financial resources spent on it.