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Sara Petrosyan

Businesses have turned the Hrazdan Gorge into a Waste-Processing station

Businesses have turned the Hrazdan Gorge into a Waste-Processing station

"Nobody protects the environment - we have to take care of the Hrazdan River. The water is not clean. There are people whose only food is this fish. Starting in the town of Hrazdan, waste water is dumped into the river, and 300 meters downstream from the Davidashen Bridge, sewage from private houses flows in", says a fisherman returning home from the Hrazdan River empty-handed. The residents of the gorge say that in the early morning hours, industrial waste from factories flows through the pipelines towards the gorge and flows into the Hrazdan River, after which the river changes color. They say that usually the polluters try to let the water flow at those times when there's no one around to prove it.

"…then there is a source of chlorine that must be discovered"

We ordered laboratory tests of waste products from the Armenal factory and the Yerevan Hydroelectric power plant from Aquaec CJSC. Specimens were taken twice, on July 7, 2002 and July 12, 2002, 300 meters downstream of the Armenal factory and 500 meters downstream of the Yerevan Hydroelectric power plant. We showed the results of the tests of the Hrazdan River water to Emil Babayan, Head of the Industrial Toxicology Department of the Institute of Inspection and Prevention of Diseases, for evaluation. He informed us that according to the test results, the Hrazdan River is generally polluted, and with dangerous toxic agents as well.

"The concentration of chlorine is unbelievably high in the water, and the level of heavy metals is also very high. Because of the flow from the Armenal factory and the Yerevan Hydroelectric power plant, the concentration of zinc, lead and copper is high. These are heavy metals and they have toxic characteristics and are dangerous to health", Babayan said. He believes that the test results must be considered preliminary, for this wasn't a full cycle of sanitary examination of surface waters. However "we shouldn't have gotten such results, they are unacceptable".

At our request, the toxicologist explained how the chemical agents discovered can affect people's health. "The high concentration of chlorine can affect fish and other river life. Heavy metals, lead in particular, is a toxin that affects the central nervous system, especially the mental development of children, when it gets into an organism. It can get into a human organism through green vegetables grown in polluted soil. Water from the Hrazdan River is used for irrigation, and these metals can accumulate in the irrigated territories and get into vegetation and food products, and through them pass to humans or animals. According to these results, the water is highly polluted with nitrites, which indicates recent organic pollution. It is, of course, impermissible to swim in such water".

Emil Babayan says these results show that the situation in those segments of the Hrazdan Gorge is quite disturbing. "If these results are correct, then there is a source of chlorine which must be discovered", he stressed.

Inspectors have not discovered infringements at Armenal and Grand Sun

The water that was tested was taken from the section of the Hrazdan River where the Armenal and Grand Sun factories are located. "We have not put a drop of water into the Hrazdan river and we will not; it is out of question", Kamo Khurshudian, head of the air and water supply division of the Armenal Russian-Armenian joint venture, firmly declared. He confirmed the existence of such suspicions because there were two pipes entering the Hrazdan Gorge from the factory. He said that several commissions had conducted verifications in the factory. And after his last visit to the Ecological Inspection Agency of the Ministry of Ecology a month ago, he shut down the pipe from the factory, in order to stop all the talk. To assure us he showed us the closed pipe.

Khurshudian insists that the small quantity of water discharged from the factory into the river is clean. He showed us the waste processing station of the factory, and explained that it had been renovated recently. Water runs from the Kanaker Hydroelectric plant through a pipe into the waste processing station and is chemically treated in order not to soil the equipment. Then the water is poured into purifiers. Pure water goes to the production unit though a pipeline system, and the remainder - the filtered water - is poured into the river. In the end, the used and cooled water is poured into the aeration station. The senior engineer of the plant, ecologist Artak Ter-Torosyan, added that there are chlorides, sulfates, fluorides, and petrochemicals in their production waste but they are within the allowed limits, according to their laboratory testing.

We found out that the pipeline running through the territory in the vicinity of the Armenal factory belongs to Grand Sun. The chief engineer of this factory, Mikayel Aghababyan, confirmed this but considered all the talk about polluting the river with toxic agents to be emotional. He informed us that the waste-processing station was renovated in the summer of 2001, and it has been in good condition for more than a year now. All the waste products from the factory are cleaned in the waste-processing station; the residue is separated, and the water flows into the gorge. "Of course, there are some traces of residue in the water that flows into the Hrazdan River, but the government has approved a level of all those substances, which shouldn't be exceeded. We stay within those limits, and cause no additional damage to the environment," the chief engineer stated confidently. 

Aghababian assures us that the water that flows into the Hrazdan has also been tested in their central chemical laboratory. The only toxic substance used in their production was mercury, which was used in the production of florescent lamps. Now they don't produce that type of lamp. "We have one production line where water colors are used in printing work. Perhaps too much red paint had been used that day," he said, referring to the day the laboratory samples had been taken. He informed us that the sanitary- epidemiological station conducts periodic inspections, and also that ten days prior to our visit, there had been an inspection by the Ecological Inspection Agency, and showed us the inspection certificate to prove that all the suspicions are unfounded. "During the inspection, no violations or infringements of ecological legislation were discovered"

"It's true that Grand Sun doesn't produce florescent lamps today, but they used mercury in large quantities. If the soil is washed in this territory and put into the river, it's possible that mercury passes in, too. When they do nickel-plating in an automobile factory, nickel gets into the river through the water. Besides that, they dump waste from the factory that contains nickel, mercury etc. into the gorge. If the territory is polluted, the substances will get into the river from the rain and pollute it," says toxicologist Emil Babayan.

Nairit and Kashi have turned the Hrazdan River into a waste-processing station

We also visited two factories that are located in theYerevansection of theHrazdanRiverand have technical water emission into the river - Nairit-1, and the Kashi OJSC. Recently, during a seminar dedicated to ecological problems, the director of the Nairit CJSC, Albert Sukiasyan, stated that Nairit's waste-processing station is not in good condition: it solves the problems of neutralization, and collects acid and bottom sediments, but "…it needs to be repaired, modified and improved; otherwise it is senseless to keep factories in the environs ofYerevan. The presence of chlorine will create new waste products, which will create a negative background that will cause other new substances to disappear," Sukiassian said.

The Director of the Center for Ecological Security and Inspection of theYerevanMunicipality, Khazhak Karayan, also maintains that Nairit's waste-processing station isn't working and the factory's waste water simply flows into the Hrazdan.

The head of the technical department of Nairit-1, Vladimir Mkhitaryan, insists that the water flowing into the Hrazdan is clean and normative. "That is to say, it is not clean enough to be used a second time, but it is not so polluted either as to not be permitted to be dumped into the river. There is a calculation approved by the Ministry of Ecology that states what substances and in what quantities are allowed to be dumped into the Hrazdan, in order not to worsen the water quality. Nairit-1 emits substances into the Hrazdan that are within the permissible limits".

According to Mkhitaryan, the most dangerous pollutants for rivers are heavy metals. Of these, Nairit uses only copper, which it does not dump into the Hrazdan. He said Nairit mainly emits edible salt into the Hrazdan, the set limit for which is 350, and which at Nairit may sometimes reach 370, though they are very strict about it. Today the factory works at one third of its production capacity, so the emission has decreased. They produce chloroprene rubber, caustic soda, latex, hydrochloric acid, etc. in accordance with the approved limits, which don't harm the water quality.

We went to the area of the Masis district where the water from Nairit goes directly into theHrazdanRiver. The villagers showed us around and explained, "This is Nairit's open collector. 100 to 200 liters of water is poured into the Hrazdan from here. This discharged water goes for the irrigation of the villages surrounding Artashat. If fish dies when this water flows into the Hrazdan, it means the water is polluted. Even the border guards quartered here are alarmed that the fish are dying". The villagers complained that Nairit has no right to dump this water into the river, because they use it for irrigation. They have threatened not to pay irrigation fees.

An employee of the Ministry of Ecology informed us that Nairit asked for a permission to dump their water in its present condition into the Hrazdan. "They say, 'What difference does it make for you whether the water is dumped from here or from someplace else'"? He explains that if it is emitted upstream of the watershed it will not get into the river. He is well informed that no chemical element is neutralized or purified at the Nairit waste-processing station, and that solid substances simply form a sediment. "If there wasn't the question of the collector, perhaps they wouldn't even collect this sediment. Simply, their pipe goes underground for eight kilometers, and if it built up in the collector, how long could they operate it?

"Today we have no emissions into theHrazdanRiverand we haven't had them, in the sense that our waste-processing station directs waste water into aeration," says Kashi's executive director, Vartan Kirakossyan, reconciling himself with difficulty to the idea of answering our questions. The main argument is that the factory is not operating today. The executive director and the chief engineer of Kashi OJSC maintain that the factory has not functioned since January and there is nothing for us to see there. However, during our tour of the leather-tanning unit, one or two machine showed signs of recent cleaning, and the area was full of water, which doesn't suggest that the factory has been shut down since January.

In the vicinity of the leather factory, on the banks of theHrazdanRiver, you can almost always find Ruslan Aslanian, chief of production at the Polyvinylacetate plant. "I sense it when the factory is working. Over the last ten days, there has been this smell. The tannery produces toxins-- toxic chemicals are used to tan the leather and are let out into the water. In order to deceive the people, they let the water out in the early morning hours, so no one will know about it. It's an unpleasant smell - specific toxic chemicals- that differs from ordinary, every-day smells.

Our group of journalists that visited the Hrazdan Gorge in the early morning was convinced that it is the tannery that emits water from a broken place in the wall. The best explanation of why they have chosen this method, when the director claims that their waste-processing station sends water though aeration, also seems to be offered by the director. "The fact alone that very powerful pumps are used to send all of it to aeration means a large sum of money. Servicing, electricity, work, salaries, make up quite an amount in the period of a year." For a small production volume, such as operating one or two machines, it doesn't male sense to have huge costs, and so Kashi has chosen the method of emitting its wastewater into the Hrazdan.

There is no fish this year, there hasn't been a single fish, because they put poison in the water, and the fish don't come to the surface, children don't swim here. There are plenty of hungry people; they come here to catch fish, there aren't any. We made theYerevanLakefor people to come and relax, but everything is poisoned here," Aslanian continues.

Kashi director Vartan Kirakossyan tells us that theirs is a chemical production. "The main chemical substances emitted from this factory are chromium wastes, which are really dangerous. If this gets excessive, it is impermissible. We do not exceed the norm. We are lucky that Hrazdan is right next to us, and we can take a lot of water from it, to dilute it more. For this reason we would like it if a biological cleaning was conducted here, so as to send purified water into the river at once." They are hopeful that the construction of the new waste-processing station, which is planned to go into operation in the next six or seven months, as well as the acquisition of new laboratory equipment, will make it possible to conduct biological cleaning.

In conclusion, it is true that all four factories we visited had waste-processing stations. However, the waste-processing station of only one of them, Armenal, is in more or less good condition: the waters there are subjected only to chemical, not biological, cleaning. At all the plants they insist that their situation is under control, because they do not have the former production volumes, as a result of which the percentage of pollution is much lower. The Ministry has approved permissible levels of waste, which they do not exceed. However, we heard things like, "They inspect the factory to get money from us. You pay the money, and they go away and they don't report whatever pollution comes from here." In one place they had this impression of the inspectors: "They find one working plant and go there to inspect." If the situation is considered controllable so far, this is only because production volumes are low. What should we expect if the inspectors work this way and the plants succeed in increasing their production?

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