By Diana Ghazaryan

Those who tout Armenia’s relatively tasteful and additive free fruits and vegetables need to take notice.

These photos show a portion of the 12 kilometer section of the Artashat irrigation canal, that supplies water to communities in Ararat Province, a major agricultural region in Armenia, which runs through Yerevan.

I took these photos on February 20 of this year. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Believe it or not, the canal had been cleaned out two weeks before.

Roudik Meghryan, who lives on Bournazyan Street in Yerevan’s Erebouni district, paralleling this stretch of the canal, recounts, “Years ago, a tourist was walking by the canal. He couldn’t stomach it and asked ‘is this your Armenia?’”

Residents told me that the tractors weren’t able to fully clean the canal. Finding the task futile, the workers just left after piling the garbage along the canal wall.

Local resident Karen Nikoyan says he helped neighbors collect the trash left behind.

“They cleaned the canal that day. You should have seen the upper portion. After they left, I and other neighbors came with a hose and pushed the trash back into the canal. No garbage trucks ever enter this neighborhood.”

Local residents say they have no idea who is dumping garbage into the canal. Armik Grigoryan, who lives close by, says he asked the community council to install a camera near his garage to identify the litter bugs and fine them.

“All day long I tell my neighbors that if I catch them dumping their trash into the canal I’ll publicly expose them. I stand guard here all day just to keep them from littering. Many get irritated but what can I do. I can’t even open a window.”

Another mitigating factor is that the water in the canal brings garbage from upstream. When it hits the wall, the trash collects and dams up. Residents say they fear the day when they wake up and see that the canal water has overflown its banks and has seeped into their homes.

Residents want the council to install garbage bins right along the canal and to clean the waterway several times a year, and not just once. They claim they have contacted the council regarding the issue for years and have also petitioned Sanitek, the company contracted to carry out rubbish removal in Yerevan. They haven’t visited the area, despite their promises to do so.

Edward Yenokyan, who heads the communal services division at the council, takes issue with this claim. “We haven’t received any calls from Bournazyan Street because there is no such problem. It’s not like we don’t have the bins and can’t install them. If some location requests bins, that request is fully satisfied.”

Yenokyan then suggests that I give his phone number to local residents in order that they call him and jointly decide where to place the garbage bins.

Sevan-Hrazdanyan-Djar Ltd. is the company that cleans the canal. Company director Samvel Hovhannisyan says they perform a major canal clean once a year and that excavators periodically show up to remove the floating trash.

Despite the fact that residents blame various municipal agencies for the problem, it’s clear that they are the ones littering the canal in the first place.

Trash bins are located between 50-100 meters from protesting Bournazyan Street residents.

Photos: Hermine Virabyan

(Diana Ghazaryan is a fourth year journalism student at Yerevan State University)