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.