Epress.am News from Armenia
On March 1, about 100 villagers gathered in the center of Karbi, a village in Armenia's Aragatsotn marz (province), to meet with Aragatsotn marzpet (regional governor) Sargis Sahakyan, the village mayor, and a representative of the developer company building a hydroelectric plant near the villages of Karbi and Ohanavan. Several members of the Pan-Armenian Environmental Front (PAEF) were also present at the meeting.
According to a statement issued by PAEF, Karbi residents are against the construction. They argue that the a hydroelectric plant will consume so much water from the Aparan reservoir that there won't be any irrigation water for their apple orchards. Meanwhile, sometimes there is not enough irrigation water for them even today.
According to the environmentalists, during the nearly two-hour long meeting, there was still no response to the question of whether there is a project under which this construction should be carried out.
"The villagers themselves didn't know eventually what is being built: a hydroelectric plant, a waterline, a reservoir, a fishpond, or something else? The marzpet and the representative of the developer, on one hand, insisted that what is being built is not a nuclear power plant, and on the other hand, guaranteed that the construction of a hydroelectric plant will not reduce the villagers' irrigation water," PAEF wrote on its Facebook page.