There is one hopeful thing about releasing water from Lake Sevan, which was decided and submitted to the National Assembly – it is that they say not 320 million cubic meters, but up to 320 million, i.e. one can stop at 240-250 million. Today Karine Danielyan, the head of For Stable Human Development NGO, said in response to a question of www.aravot.am what the current state of releasing water from the lake is.
In her words, academic commission has determined the amount of water to be released and it is possible that after experts’ discussions, there will stop at that very amount, “The Sevan question is under negotiations, we are more concerned about 3 mysterious things regarding Sevan, which we will necessarily raise. The first thing is that in 1995, the nuclear power plant was restored, in 1997-98, the Cabinet made a decision that they would release no more water for energy reasons. At the same time, we would see every winter that a lot of water flew across Hrazdan. Every winter we would complain ‘where are you releasing water?’ and we would not get an answer. In the end, the lowest level in the history was in the winter of 2001-2002, which is absolutely strange. We think that there was illicit energy, no other reason is possible.”
The 2nd mystery regarding the lake was, according to Ms. Danielyan, in 2008, when the Cabinet made releasing water conditional on the drought, as it has done this year and the environmentalists’ 10-year data have revealed and proved that there was no drought in 2007-2008.
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According to Ms. Danielyan, after those proofs, the Cabinet put forward another explanation, “Then they told us that there were arid conditions. OK, one doesn’t release double amount of water in arid conditions. Then they said that agricultural fields had expanded substantially, we examined and said that there had not expanded, on the contrary, they had diminished. Then they said that gardens had become bigger, we checked, they had increased by only 2%, not 100%. A commission was established, we examined, the lake was on the way to healing, particularly, in the central part and it was a bit weak in the coastal area, there was an imbalance in regard to increasing-decreasing the level of water. In our opinion, it is dangerous to strike a blow at the lake.” The next mystery of Lake Sevan has happened this year, according to the environmentalist, “We don’t understand again – the winter was so snowy, where has the water gone; reservoirs are empty, why? In 2008, they would say that
they were empty, we went and saw that they were not empty, this time we have gone and seen that they are really empty.”
Environmentalists have held discussions on the Lake Sevan issue at the Human Rights Defender’s office recently, but as Karine Danielyan assured, although the defender has also assured that the ORHUS convention has been violated, but the environmentalists have not gotten answers to their questions from the respective state bodies.
Nelly BABAYAN
