Yesterday by first and second hearings the RA NA approved the amendments to the RA Law on Sevan Lake, which allows to drain 150 million cubic meters of water from Sevan. Moreover, the second reading was adopted much faster.
Reminder: On June 14, speaking at a cabinet session, head of the Water Committee, Andranik Andreasyan, said because of little precipitation this spring and summer the Armenian government will ask the National Assembly to endorse a legislation change allowing it to nearly double the volume of water taken from Lake Sevan for irrigation purposes. The government would like the permissible volume of 170 million cubic meters to be increased to 320 million cubic meters. Yesterday at the NA the head of the Heritage faction Ruben Hakobyan told us that they would vote against the bill because it contains serious environmental issues. “The government has to check the capacities in advance and in this regard we have resources by the use of which we can take care of the water deficit. That is one of the reasons. The government has entered the NA with a certain motto, which I called a motto to steal the emotion of people. And this was the following, “we should vote for this bill because otherwise people won’t have water.” So in this situation it would mean that if you voted against this it would mean that people would stay without water. And now it’s very difficult to explain the authorized officials that the agriculture ministry and government should have thought of this long ago in order not to face this water deficit. It is characteristic to third or fourth degree countries to use the natural resources without giving anything back. Unfortunately, this is true not only in the case of Sevan but also the mining sector,” said Hakobyan. And the secretary of Prosperous Armenia party Naira Zohrabyan claims that the party voted for the bill because it relates to the interests of villagers. “We have voted for the law on Sevan Lake because so was the public demand of rural communities. Residents of various rural communities have told us during our meetings that the issue of irrigation is very serious and the reserves are very scarce. The consumers themselves urged the PAP to vote for this bill,” mentioned Zohrabyan and added that they had met with the rural residents of Aragatsotn, Lori, Syunik, Tavoush and Ararat marzes. “There were environmental organizations that definitely claimed that the drainage of Sevan would create serious challenges and there were also the ones, who thought that the anticipated volume of water drainage wouldn’t harm the ecology and the lake,” said Zohrabyan. The chair of the NA standing committee of nature protection Vardan Ayvazyan has a similar opinion with her, who believes that starting from 2002 the level of Sevan has been drastically increasing. “Since 2002 the level of Sevan has grown by four meters 14 centimeters and now our government wants to give water to citizens. So shall we do it or not?” yesterday stated Vardan Ayvazyan during his speech. After this speech an ARF MP Vahan Hovhannisyan asked Vardan Ayvazyan whether the latter can do something to ensure that river Yenisei flows through Armenia. As a response to that Vardan Ayvazyan said, “When you make Bosporus “sea of blood” I will help make Yenisei flow through Armenia.” Yesterday we tried to find out from Ayvazyan what are the reasons of voting for the bill but the latter said that he doesn’t see any reason why not to vote for it. “Now are the environmentalists concerned about Sevan or they are worried that it won’t reach the villagers? I don’t see the private interest here at all when we are speaking about providing water to agricultural development. Now what do you support? Shall we give water to the villager or not?” Does this mean the bill was adopted in favor of villagers? As a response to this question Ayvazyan said, “At least not in my favor. The farmers need water. Back then our fatherland needed electrical power.” Also, yesterday our reporter tried to find out information from the head of the NA standing commit of agriculture Samvel Balasanyan but his assistant said that Balasanyan was attending a wedding. Nonetheless, the chair of the Union of Greens NGO Hakob Sanasaryan thinks that the drainage if 320 million cubic meters of Sevan water was well planned by the government. “Last year we knew that the level of Sevan wasn’t supposed to rise and the level shouldn’t go up for the next three years. This was an internal agreement. But when they started to give internal justification as though there is drought we realized that these are merely formulations. The Water Committee said because of little precipitation this spring and summer the Armenian government will ask the National Assembly to endorse a legislation change allowing it to nearly double the volume of water taken from Lake Sevan for irrigation purposes. For this purpose they have done the same work. They haven’t cleaned the bushes and trees on the beach to show that the state should spend a lot of money to clean these areas,” mentioned Sanasaryan. According to him, there two main reasons why the water level is not going up. “The World Bank highlights that the water level shouldn’t go up. This is stipulated in the 1996-97 program of maintaining ecological balance of Sevan, which reads that the rise of the level of Sevan will cause numerous damages and the exploitation of Vorotan tunnel is inexpedient even if zero dram is spent on it,” mentioned the environmentalist by mentioning the second reason which is the construction of restaurants and hotels on the beach belonging to a number of officials.
Marine MARTIROSYAN