State Selling Water to Poor Villagers, But Provides Free of Charg to SHPPs

Armenia has fields, where people are obliged to pay for water, while there are fields, where water is free of charge. These fields are agriculture and energ  - water for land cultivators costs 11 AMD for one sq. meter – one ha area needs 9,000 – 11,000 sq. meter water for irrigation, which is equivalent to 99,0000-121,000 AMD. Though officials state that water price should have been higher, but the state subsidized it to ease villagers' burden, the villagers find it difficult to pay for the water, they often don't pay for it leaving land areas uncultivated.   

Recently in reply to EcoLur's question, why villagers have to pay for water, when the river flows past their houses, Adibek Ghazaryan, Head of PIU of State Committee on Water Industry said, 'All our resources, including water are public wealth, it's not somebody's wealth to use it free of charge...They must pay...'

In this case a question arises: why the state hasn't set a water price for HPPs and SHPPS, why, in this case, public wealth – water, is free of charge, when HPPs pipe huge distances of river water leaving rivers and people without water. In this field, governmental resolution N 927 dated on 30 June 2011, which lays down the sanitary flow is determined with the minimum drain within last 10 days. This means, if the river experienced a drought, and a zero water course was fixed in a randomly selected year within any ten days, the sanitary flow can be estimated 0 cubic meters per second. It turns out that on one hand, the state forces poor villagers to pay for water, on the other hand, it gives water free of charge to a small number of powerful people with finances, who use public health free of charge.