EcoLur
The experts of German Development Bank, KfW, didn’t bring convincing arguments that the construction of Argtichi SHPP funded by the bank has legal grounds. Reminder: EcoLur’s letter addressed to the bank shows certain violations of the Armenian legislation, “… The project was issued the opinion of “Environmental Expertise” SNCO on 04.06.2006, i.e. eight years before the construction. While Article 11 (4) of RA Law “On Environmental Impact Expert Assessment” says, “The expert opinion loses its force, if the implementation of planned activities doesn’t start within a year after issuing the expert opinion, afterwards a new expert opinion is required.” Article 12 of the same law says, “The implementation of the planned activities subject to environmental impact expert assessment is banned without a positive expert opinion,”” the EcoLur’s letter says.
The reply letter by KfW only says, “The technical consultant has re-examined the documents for Argichi SHPP and confirmed the validity of all necessary permissions, including the environmental expert assessment quoted by you.” This means that the bank’s technical consultant didn’t take into consideration the fact we proved that the document entitled “Environmental expertise opinion on Argitchi SHPP” is expired and invalid. Then the letter addressed to the bank mentioned other violations of the environmental legislation, which says, “Besides violating RA Law “On Environmental Impact Expert Assessment”, the construction of Argitchi SHPP also violates RA Law “On Lake Sevan”. The Argitchi River is an immediate impact zone of Lake Sevan, and in line with Article 8 of RA Law “On Lake Sevan”, “Immediate impact zone includes Lake Sevan basin up to watershed. Any activities which would directly or indirectly affect on Lake Sevan, hydrophysical, hydrochemical, hydrobiological, sanitary-technological, hygienic and other qualitative and quantitative indicators of the rivers, flowing into Lake Sevan, is banned.”
The Argitchi River is a spawning site for endemic fish species for the conservation and recovery of populations and for this purpose the state budget of Armenia annually allots around 70 million AMD equivalent to US $ 170,000, i.e. Argitchi SHPP causes essential damage to Lake Sevan ecosystem thus violating Article 11 of RA Law “On Lake Sevan”, which says that the priority of biodiversity should be adhered to. Damage is also caused to the state budget and state program “Annual and complex measures on the recovery, preservation, reproduction and natural development and usage of Lake Sevan ecosystem.” The reply letter by KfW only says, “Regarding the license and permission awarding process itself, we kindly ask you to direct your enquiries to the responsible Ministries of the Republic of Armenia.” We would like to draw the attention of the technical consultants’ attention to the fact that project selection criteria for KfW funding include, “operating in compliance with national environmental, health, and safety legislation.” These criteria are published on the website of GAF, German-Armenian Fund, through which the funding is implemented (http://gaf-re-shpp.am/index.php?id=9).
This means that irregardless of the decisions made by the Armenian governmental bodies, there is a need to comply with the laws, which, under the Armenian Constitution, are higher than the decision of executive body agencies. These very violations were outlined in the letter addressed to the bank. What about safety, we would like to add, that the safety of the population was breached twice after the operation of Argitchi SHPP on 18 July and 1 September 2013. The pipes of the SHPP didn’t endure the load and broke and flooded the harvest of the local communities. The compensations for 100 USD to the local can’t be considered as sufficient and legal in the viewpoint of criteria selection and project monitoring, as these obligations are never fixed. The company didn’t mention any in the project, while technical consultants didn’t check the presence of obligations on safety. EcoLur insists that Argitchi SHPP is illegal and doesn’t comply with the criteria for the selection of SHPP funding adopted by German KfW Development Bank through GAF.
November 28, 2013 at 16:46