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Sara Petrosyan

Was the Arzni Poultry Farm responsible for the contamination of Arabkir's drinking water?

On October 25, 2003 , the water supplied to the Arabkir District of Yerevan was contaminated, and according to information published by the Ministry of Health, 387 people were treated that day at the Nork Infectious Hospital . None of the residents of the village of Arzni doubts that the contamination was the work of the Arzni Pedigree Poultry-Swine-Cattle (PSC) Farm.

They point to the fact that the poultry farm's industrial wastewater is routinely dumped into the main sewer without purification. Before the recent installation of water meters in the area, people used to let household water flow freely, and it coursed through the sewers, carrying the waste away, and preventing clogging. Since the meters have been installed, people have become thrifty, and now only a trickle of water flows through the sewers, and as a result, they become clogged. Last October, the sewers in Arzni clogged; the sewage overflowed and got into the drinking water bound for Yerevan.

Residents of Arzni recall that on October 25, 2003 , the day the contamination occurred in Arabkir, the main sewer running through the village overflowed and inundated the neighborhood. Sewage flowed through a man named Grisha's garden, and from there into the gorge where the sluices supplying Yerevan with drinking water are located.

"The sewers were clogged in the village and I raised the alarm with the Abovian regional department of the Water and Sewage Utility. Utility employees cleaned the area with a tractor for twenty-four hours, and they found everything - you name it - dead chickens, a ram's head, mixed fodder, and so on," the Arzni village mayor, Veniamin Veniaminov describes. He says this was the first case when the wastewater overflowed the sewer and poured into the gorge that the Arzni-2 water pipeline, which supplies Yerevan , runs through. The villagers interrupt each other to give us the details of the accident, itemizing the contents of the sewage that horrified even employees of the Sewage Utility. "The next day, after a clamor was raised, they swept the area to cover up the traces," the villagers add.

At the time of the accident, the media focused its attention on the number of people falling ill, which rose every day, and on the ineffective search by the Yerevan Water and Sewage Utility. After a lengthy search, Utility employees found that the emergency conditions were not such as could cause the spread of infection on such a scale. Nevertheless, the contamination of the water stopped. Arzni residents maintain that the source of infection was eliminated when the local sewer was unclogged, and the wastewater stopped flowing into the Arzni Gorge.

"The preliminary investigation established that accidents in the sewage system had occurred in the area of the Arzni springs and the Lamp Factory, but since the exact locations of the accidents and the persons responsible for the damage was not been established, the criminal proceedings were dropped," was the conclusion of the Office of the Prosecutor General as, months ago, it halted preliminary examination of the case which had affected thousands of people. In its decision to drop the case, the Prosecutor's Office also mentioned that sewage and wastewater had mixed with the drinking water under the ground at some length.

But then, very unexpectedly, the chairman of the board of the Arzni PSC Farm Co., Marat Janvelyan, decided to personally justify himself to the public, although the issue of his responsibility had never been raised. In an interview on November 5, 2003 with the Azg daily he stated: "No one has visited us, no one has checked anything, but irresponsible statements are being made." His sole counter-argument was: "If the water was infected on our farm, then why didn't residents of the villages situated up to the Lamp Factory get sick?"

We found out from the Yerevan Water and Sewage Utility that the Arzni-2 water pipeline supplies in particular the Kanaker Community of Yerevan and a small part of the village of Getamej, areas where summer houses are located, and it is quite possible that no one was there in mid-fall, especially as those were rainy days. But we also learned from the Ministry of Health that according to official data, at the time of the outbreak in Arabkir, seven cases of contamination were registered in Kanaker, and three people were hospitalized.

As regards Janvelyan's claim that no one had visited the farm, we would point out that we greatly wanted to, but were turned down by Arzni PSC. Furthermore, the head of the Aeratsia Station of the Industrial Waste Water Control, Valery Grigoryan, informed us that their inspectors conduct measurements in those institutions where the management is well disposed to them and gives its permission. They have a general agreement with the Arzni PSC Farm on purification of wastewater, but no samples have been taken there and, therefore, Valery Grigoryan was unable to say what kind of waste is in fact dumped into the sewer system.

Of course, this was all to be expected. People in Arzni constantly complain about the stench, especially strong in the evening hours, when the winds come up. Since 1998, seventy-five residents of the Getashen community have been deluging government mailboxes with their complaints. "The pig farm located in the vicinity of Getashen, which has no sewage system, has made our life just unbearable. We breathe in the stinking air; waste water and dung penetrate the entire community, creating an unsanitary situation," a typical letter says. After they appealed to then-presidential advisor Vahan Hovhannissyan, a commission was set up within the Ministry of Health, which conducted an examination of the farm's cattle-breeding complex. The letter sent in response to the resident's complaint and signed by Health Minister Haik Nikoghosyan stated, "At present the management of the Arzni PSC Farm, in accordance with the instructions from the territorial Anti-Epidemic Center , is taking urgent measures to prevent emergency situations. In particular, the usage of the damaged sewage system has stopped, and reservoirs for collecting and processing waste waters and other waste products are being built." The minister also noted that those measures were temporary and the ministry had instructed the farm to develop within a month a plan for additional actions aimed at solving the problem permanently.

The letter sent to the residents by the Kotayk Marzpet (governor), S. Stepanyan in 1999 says: "We have strongly warned the management of the Arzni PSC Farm to pay special attention and to undertake efficient measures to prevent waste water from flowing into the surrounding areas." The former marzpet also informed the villagers that the Arzni Farm had undertaken to build a sewage line. Eventually the sewage line was built and connected with the sewage system running to Yerevan . But the residents again appealed to various agencies, stating that the situation had not changed since only cesspools had been dug for wastewater, and thus, "the same stench surrounds us all day, and the sewage still flows into the village territory and pollute the environment."

The situation remains unchanged: the drinking water reservoir is polluted, the adjacent areas are swampy, and a stench covers the village. Anti-Epidemic services only warn that swine excrement is dangerous for people and may cause a number of epidemics. Characterizing the responses they receive from above, villagers explain, "They say those are producers, we can't tell them what to do."

The Arzni Farm was built during the Soviet era, on 54 hectares of land allocated from the village administrative territory. The locals maintain that there was no stench in the past, since the farm was operated in accordance with environmental and sanitary standards. They point out that the structure was designed as a poultry farm only. But now the territory is used for raising pigs and cows as well, which is impermissible, especially since the sanitary corridor between the village of Arzni and the Farm was destroyed long ago. A new community, Getashen, which is inhabited by refugees from Karabakh, was built in recent years in Arzni. According to sanitary standards, there must be at least 300 meters distance between a poultry farm and a residential area, and 500 meters for a pig farm. But the Getashen community is just across the highway from the Arzni Farm, a mere 100 meters away, and the stench from the farm is present 24 hours a day.

Aram Galstyan, who heads the Department of Preservation of the Atmosphere of the Ministry of Ecology, told us that the Arzni PSC Farm has never received permission to operate from their department, since it doesn't meet their requirements. "They violate the standards and a complex study is necessary," he explained. The ministry has just informed us that the list of the permissible limits for the emissions into the atmosphere is in the process of final approval. They have also written, "On July 20, 2004 the permissible limits for dangerous substances discharged with waste water into the sewers system by the Arzni PSC Farm were approved." As a matter of fact, the ministry only concerned itself with the matter when we sent them a written inquiry into the current situation in Arzni on July 8, 2004.

Thus we can reasonably conclude that the Arzni PSC Farm operates in indifference to all ecological and sanitary standards, and that the emergency situation that occurred on October 25, 2003 came as no surprise, at least not to the residents of Arzni.

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