Armenian government does not intend to initiate process of additional  water release from Lake Sevan

ArmInfo.Additional water intake from Lake Sevan will not be conducted until the permission of the National Assembly of Armenia is received, Minister of Agriculture of  Armenia Artur Khachatryan told journalists on August 2. In the  meantime, the State Committee on Water System of Armenia intends to  make an additional water release from Lake Sevan amounting to 2 40  million cubic meters, while the environmentalists are against, noting  the deplorable state of the main source of fresh water in the region  and the possible water apocalypse in the republic.

According to the Minister of Agriculture, in this situation, it is  more reasonable to use deep wells instead of additional water release  from Sevan. Last year, more water was released from Sevan, the money  received was transferred to the extra budgetary account, and if these  funds are used to drill wells, Khachatryan believes that this will be  more reasonable for both Sevan and Armenian agriculture.

For today, despite the Water Committee's proposal for additional  water intake and the positive conclusion of the expert group on it,  the government did not initiate the procedure and did not apply to  the parliament. 

"This means that not a single drop of water from Sevan will be  released without the decision of the legislator," he said, stressing,  however, that everything will depend on the weather conditions. In  his opinion, the system needs radical reforms - the conclusion that  70% of water is lost, he as an organizer of agriculture, considers  unacceptable. As the Minister emphasized, it is necessary to install  water meters, and pay clearly for the water released, organize  regular irrigation and make the process controllable.

To recall, on July 17, 2017 the National Assembly of Armenia approved  the law on increasing the volume of water release from Lake Sevan  from 170 million cubic meters to 270 million cubic meters. The reason  for this decision was the fact that the water basins in the country  were not full. According to environmentalists fish farms cause no  less serious damage to the environment and water resources of the  country. However, according to the environmentalist, specialist on  water resources Qnarik Hovhannisyan, the Armenian government asks to  increase the releases each year, justifing the request with deficit  of irrigation water, but in fact only about 25% of the water from  Sevan reaches the farmers, the remaining 70% is lost. Thus, despite  the fact that 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  would lead to irreversible consequences such as the intensification  of the waterlogging process, the law was adopted, which, as expected,  influenced the level of Lake Sevan. The authors of the law assured  that additional releases of water per 100 million cubic meters,  according to calculations, could lead to a decrease in the lake level  by 8 cm, in case of which, even in comparison with the same day of  the previous year, a high water level of Lake Sevan will be  maintained at 10 cm (18-8). 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 alarm about the problem of algae  fouling Sevan, which, according to experts, is caused not only by   high air temperature, scanty precipitation, the dumping of extremely  polluted waters into the basins of the country and the lack of water  treatment stations, but also last year's additional water release.