EcoLur
Nationwide cleaning of the littoral areas of Lake Sevan, ensuring increase in water level and even asking the Diaspora for support: such proposals and many others were raised on 4 July in the course of the gathering of “SOS Sevan” initiative held at EcoLur press club. Lusine Hambaryan – Senior Researcher at Institute of Hydroecology and Ichthyology of NAS RA said, “In the course of blooming last year, there were over-waterlogging indicators recorded, which is, in the first place, the presence of biogenic elements: there is a drastic increase in phosphorus and the biomass of algae is increasing, which means the biodiversity of microalgae will decrease and we will observe such blooming every year. We have investigated and found out that Anabaena species (Anabaena flos aquae) is emitting microcystine, which is a poison. Naturally we can’t use such water for recreation and irrigation, and we also can’t use the reserves of fish and crawfish for Lake Sevan.” She mentioned as a proposal that national standard shall be developed in line with the international standards on the concentration of microcystine in freshwater so as to be able to apply cleaning technologies in Sevan. Chair of “Association for Sustainable Human Development” NGO Karine Danielyan outlined if there is a wetland instead of Lake Sevan, it means we are not losing the lake but the country. She also offered to ask the Diaspora for support, particularly in terms of operating cleaning stations. Member of Board of “ICOMOS/Armenia” NGO, Gagik Sukhudyan - author of Sevan National Park project said the reasons for blooming are several. “The first reason is non-operation of Arpa-Sevan tunnel over the recent 7 years. Second, we have forgotten about Vorotan that should have brought 165 million cum water,” he said. Sukhudyan proposed to conduct biological cleaning in all the rivers flowing into Lake Sevan in parallel with cleaning the littoral areas in Sevan. Liana Asoyan – President of “Blejan” NGO outlined that the problem of Lake Sevan equals to defending the borders of the country. Levon Gasparyan, member of Armenian Environmental Front Civic Initiative, noted, “An environmental crime has been committed towards Lake Sevan by the previous government and the committers of the environmental crime shall bear responsibility. We need to announce a nationwide mobilization and increase the level of Lake Sevan very quickly.” Energy Expert Eduard Arzumanyan said, Sevan doesn’t have a important and decisive significance for energy. Inga Zarafyan, President of EcoLur NGO mentioned, “We must demand certain programs and a certain action plan directed at saving Lake Sevan. We must demand to have risk assessment carried out. At the same time, the real balance of Lake Sevan shall be determined taking into consideration the fact that the rivers flowing into the lake don’t reach Sevan because of unregistered water intake and then publish the figures.” “SOS Sevan” initiative stated that it is willing to accept proposals aimed at saving Lake Sevan in order to include them in the proposals to be addressed to the Armenian Government. The proposals can be sent via social media networks and e-mails. Photo from Karen Hovhannisyan’s FB page
July 08, 2019 at 18:23