National Assembly of Armenia adopted in second reading a bill on fence of additional 40 million cubic meters of water from Lake Sevan

ArmInfo. On August 29, the  National Assembly of Armenia adopted the draft law on making addenda  to the law "On approval of the annual and comprehensive programs of  measures for the restoration, conservation, reproduction and use of  the Lake Sevan ecosystem" at an extraordinary meeting on the second  reading, providing for an additional 40 million cubic meters from  Lake Sevan water.

"For" 80 deputies voted, "against" 1 deputy. It should be noted that  the bill provides for increasing water releases from Lake Sevan from  the current 170 million to 210 million cubic meters. Chairman of the  Water Committee of Armenia Inessa Babayan noted that the government  is compelled to take this step.

To note, yesterday on August 28 during an extraordinary meeting of  the National Assembly took place against the backdrop of a protest  organized by the civil initiative "SOS Sevan". The participants of  the action demanded to completely stop the water intake from the  lake. Earlier, the chairman of the NGO "Association for Sustainable  Development" Karine Danielyan noted that the current 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 Danielyan.