In the 1980s, the government made the decision to relocate all the residents on the left bank of the Hrazdan River below the village of Kaghsi and resettle them in the village's Upper District.

The reason was a sewage treatment plant located on the opposite bank of the river, where sewage from Hrazdan, Hankavan, Gagarin and Sevan was brought in for mechanical, biological and physicochemical cleaning.  The norms laid out by the Soviet Union required residential areas to not be located within a radius of 500 meters from sewage treatment plants.  But the program for resettlement was left incomplete with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Occupied houses can be found today even within a distance of 100 meters from the plant, and that too, when not all the stages of treatment are being conducted in the plant today.

"It is mainly mechanical treatment that is carried out there.  They take out the large pieces by hand and put them aside, and these are then collected by trucks and taken away.  Nothing else is done because there is no electricity, all the precipitation tanks were ruined during the years of the energy crisis," said Ruben Arakelyan, deputy head of the Hrazdan office of the Armenian Water and Sewage Company, who stressed that they "both supply as well as ensure the outflow of water."

A person close to the system and well aware of the situation at the treatment plant said that the plant had not been working for a number of years.  He wished to remain anonymous.  "The railing has been broken, there are cracks in the concrete.  No mechanical work is being done at all.  The water flows through the system as it would through any pipe.  If you open the door and go inside you will see that nobody has been there for years - the ceiling drips and nothing normal has been left there.  There are no workers, just one guard."

The water flows into the Hrazdan River after undergoing "mechanical treatment" and then through the village of Kaghsi, which is unsanitary.  This is the assessment of Garnik Mkrtchyan, deputy head of the Kotayk branch of the State Agency for Hygiene and Epidemiological Control (SAHEC).  "The waste water is more dangerous to the animals and plants; it should not be used for irrigation, " said Mkrtchyan.  He noted that although there had not been any water-borne illnesses or outbreaks, they had written to the Ministry of Environmental Protection a number of times.  According to Mkrtchyan, he had personally raised the issue of the relocation of Kaghsi residents even during Soviet times, but the government never managed to complete the program.

According to Kaghsi community head Sedrak Davtyan, more than 30 families continue to live in the vicinity of the treatment plant.  Those families have been given land allocations as well, but the state did not construct houses for those villagers or left them half-built.  "The waste water flows unchanged into the Hrazdan River - it is an epidemic situation.  This issue is constantly raised, but there are no results.  The residents come with this issue very often, but the community does not even have the means to build a house for one family each year," said Davtyan.

"The smell, mosquitoes, and flies suffocate us," said Laura Petrosyan, who lives near the treatment plant.  She said that her daughter-in-law had once been poisoned by mosquito bites when she was two-months pregnant.

Laura Petrosyan complained of their social conditions. There was a time when the state did not allow just the renovation of houses.  Now, even supplying their houses with gas has been prohibited.  The area was deserted because of the unfinished relocation program and the school was located two kilometers away.  In the winter, this area is completely isolated from the village and the rest of the world and, according to the residents, "If a child falls ill, none of the ambulances you call will come here."  "We wrote a letter to the Ministry and they replied that they would build us houses.  But they aren’t taking it seriously, they're just delaying it from election to election," complained Petrosyan, who also owned land in the Upper District and had even built her basement, but could not afford to do more.  When we asked Petrosyan whether the treatment plant was functional, she replied that her husband had been working as the guard there for around 30 years but "everything was broken and discarded - what was left there?"

Ashot Hambardzumyan, who lives 100 meters from the treatment plant, received his land allocation back in 1986-87 and filled in the foundation of his house, but the construction has not gone any further over the past few years.  He does not have the means to complete building his house.  "The situation is very bad here - they relocated the whole area, but a few families are left.  If you come here in the summer, you'll see how the mosquitoes, the water and the waste fill this place.  People can’t live here, not even animals can.  We don't water these trees.  They don't let us renovate our houses.  We don't know what we're supposed to do to live here."  Hambarduzmyan told us how his brother's children had fallen ill four or five years ago and the infection caused sores to open on their legs, after which their family moved.  Although their house had been half-built then, they had had no other choice.


Awareness of environmental issues in the village was limited to personal experience in the village.  In the summer, this meant the bad smell and the ubiquitous flies.  Naturally, the primary concern of the Kaghsi residents living in these unsanitary conditions was the status of their residence.  The Kaghsi registration office does no register residents who live outside the administrative map of the village.  This was a decision inherited from Soviet times.  Naturally, connecting them with a gas supply is prohibited as well.  "Those residents have no status from the point of view of the state.  The registration office does not give them papers or re-register them.  They must be relocated," said the Kaghsi community head.

There are currently no means available for resettlement.  It seemed that there was not much to hope for either.  There are elections ahead, but the residents did not even hope to get a promise of help.

Instead, the Hrazdan office of the Armenian Water and Sewage Company said that there were plans for fundamental renovation.  "We are interested in the re-opening of the plant.  We had guests from Ukraine and England last year, who were interested in its re-opening.  We presented proposals and they left, but new still do not have a reply.  But we are sure that it will be restored," said Garnik Mrtchyan, deputy head of the local office.

Kamo Tumoyan, head of the environmental protection department of the Kotayk provincial administration, confirmed that there was a program for the reestablishment of the plant.  "At this moment, the plant poses a great threat to its surroundings.  There is no cleaning, waster water flows into the Hrazdan unchanged.  The houses of Bjni are also on the riverbank, not just Kaghsi.  This is an issue for Aghveran as well.  There is a plan to reopen the Kaghi treatment plant using finances contributed by donors.  If it starts functioning with its previous capacity (mechanical, biological and physicochemical), then there will not be a threat.  But now, there is the danger of infection.  Waste water from industries flows to Kaghsi as well," said Tumoyan.

Sedak Davtyan, the Kaghsi community head, said that there had been a plan to renovate the plant back in Soviet times as well, wherein the water was to flow through special pipes.  But the relocation of residents was done despite this plan.  The importance of relocation was emphasized by deputy head of the SAHEC Kotayk branch, Garnik Mkrtchyan, as well.  "Houses should be located at least 500 meters away from the treatment plant.  The Republic of Armenia does not such official norms yet, but they will soon be introduced," the latter hoped.

There was heavy snowfall on the day we visited Kaghsi.  The roads were closed, and the few families living in the vicinity of the treatment plant had been completely cut off from the village, as if "lost in the abyss".  They were not very interested in the programs that donor organizations had to develop for the renovation of the plant, because in any case they were not going to be given certificates of ownership, or permission to renovate or supply their houses with gas.  Their "unclear" status was not going to benefit from it, especially since - as epidemiologists said - the environmental issues would not be solved through renovation.

Kotayk