Issues of the Kura-Araks River Basin: Now and Then

The issue of water resource management and preservation of the Kura-Araks basin concerns all the South Caucasus countries, since the rivers forming the basin flow across the territories of the three countries, imposing them to various constraints.

The constraints on the water resources are caused by different sources of pollution.

Since the South Caucasus is teeming with conflicts, the water resource management is under direct threat. Moreover, given the long-lasting conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, every trans boundary issue is being politicized. This also regards the water resources management. All the countries equally suffer from this. Meanwhile, the experts assert that the trans boundary issues are specific and the efforts of one state are not enough to rectify them.

The lack of “consensus” among the countries’ officials affects the quality of water resources – regardless where the river has its source and where the waters flow, all the countries sharing the waters generate constraints on the river basin.

Even though the waters of the South Caucasus are a common resource, joint programs on monitoring the trans boundary rivers are implemented exclusively in the frames of international projects.

This investigation seeks to tackle the issue from the perspective of the two countries.

The Kura-Araks river in Armenia-Iran border

Armenia

The Kura-Araks basin is the main water resource in the South Caucasus, it is a part of the Caspian Sea basin, and all the issues on trans boundary waters concern this river system, Thus, all the countries sharing the basin have their own interests in this issue. Given its geographical position, the rivers rise up from Armenia and Georgia and flow to Azerbaijan.

Inga Zarafian, Head of “EcoLur” environmental NGO notes that it is well known that the country, where the rivers rise up is considered the pollutant pays. “There is no secret, and its natural – the more downstream the area is, the more it is polluted, from the upstream areas,” the expert says.

At the same time, Zarafian stresses that it is very hard to develop standards, which could determine the polluter pays and its level of responsibility for that, since the standards should be accepted by all the countries.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the monitoring of the water quality in the South Caucasus, including of the trans boundary rivers was implemented in the frames of the decrees adopted by the Soviet officials.

Seyran Minasyan, Head of RA Environmental Impact Monitoring Center state non-commercial organization, explains that these standards were an absurd, since they equally applied throughout the whole Soviet territory.

Minasyan highlights three main causes for water pollution – population, industry and technology. «From the point of technological development, the countries of the basin are almost on the same level. However, since the population of Azerbaijanis three times more than our population, its contribution to the pollution is three times more. Besides,Azerbaijanis situated in a low-land area, where the water self-purification potential is lower”, Minasyan tells us.

Vladimir Narimanyan, Head of the Water Resources Management Agency at the RA Ministry of Environmental Protection, says that the 20 biological water treatment plants built in Soviet Armenia for the municipal sewage water treatment are currently in operational. “They do not operate in Azerbaijan, either.”

Since 2000, 18 programs with a total cost of 25 million AMD have been implemented in the region with the assistance of international donor organizations. The programs related to different aspects of water resources management – water quality, quantity, floods, etc.

The results of the monitoring, conducted under an EU project, suggest establishing a reliable, comprehensive information center on the water resources of the countries around the basin.

“It is [the center] already operating in Armenia, and some steps are being taken in Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, Georgia expresses only a weak desire for rectifying the problem,” the monitoring inception paper states.

Azerbaijan

The place where Kura and  Araks rivers are mixed

The downstream geographical position of Azerbaijan causes pollution of its waters from the untreated waters of the upstream rivers of Armenia and Georgia.

The Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan conducts regular monitoring of the waters of the Kura-Araks rivers. The monitoring results permanently evidence that the waters flowing from Georgia and Armenia into Azerbaijan are already polluted.

The results of monitoring in the Shihli-2 site have shown that the concentration of phenols revealed in the Kura river is 4 times higher of the permissible level, while the concentration of copper is 3 times higher. In the Aghstafachay reservoir the concentration of phenol is 3 time higher the permitted level, the concentration of copper – is four times higher.

The monitoring of the river Araks has also indicated excessive amounts of pollutants.

The Azerbaijani journalists participating in this project had visited the site of Sugovushan, which in translation from Azerbaijani means “confluence of rivers”.  At this site, situated in the region of Salyan, Araks meets Kura and flows into the Caspian sea. The two rivers flow jointly, but they have different colors and do not mix with each other.

One of the dwellers of the village who answered to our questions, told about an old method of water treatment, which they used in their family – special rocks, called “zey” are placed in the dump. These rocks accelerate the sedimentation of heavy substances from the water.

Azad Aliyev, environmentalist, Head of “Social-Economic Investigations Center” NGO pointed out the peculiarities of the trans boundary problem. It is impossible to solve them by the efforts of only one state.

For remedying the pollution problem of the trans boundary rivers, Azerbaijan has ratified the Helsinki Convention on the Protection and Use of Trans boundary Watercourses and International Lakes. Armenia and Georgia are not signatories to this Convention.

Matanat Avazova, Deputy Director of Monitoring Department for Environment Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan, says that during the last 20 years Armenia and Azerbaijan have dumped less amount of industrial waste than during the Soviet times, since many factories are either not running or work at half of their capacity. Despite the diminishing volumes of the Armenian mining industry, the mine waste storages are still remaining. During rains and floods, the water penetrates into these storages, gets polluted and flows to Azerbaijan through the river Araks.

The polluted waters of Kura flows to Azerbaijanal so through the territory of Georgia. Upon reaching the dam located near the city of Mingechevir, up to 50-60% of the river’s waters are self-purified. The Kurais not subject to pollution In the upstream area of the country.

“Since Azerbaijan cannot receive fresh water in the upstream areas of Kara and Araks, it implements its own treatment of the rivers.  17 water monitoring stations permanently operate on the Kura river, early warning systems are running on the Araks, which provide the state with precise information about the Kura and Araks waters quality”, Avazova concludes.

Sources of Pollution of the Kara- Araks Basin in Armenia and Azerbaijan

The principal causes of deterioration of the surface waters of the Kura-Araks basin are domestic, sewage, industrial and cattle waste, as well as agricultural drainage waters.

All over the world, domestic and organic wastewater undergo biological and chemical treatment before they are discharged into the surface waters. At the moment, there are no water treatment facilities on the Kura-Araks basin. The wastewater treatment plants built in the Soviet Times are mostly inoperational, and the wastewater receives only mechanical treatment.

According to the results of the EU monitoring of the trans-boundary rivers of the Kara River basin, all the countries ensure mechanical treatment only, and only in a limited number of cities. Under the mechanical treatment, the water is purified in a pipe with a filter of 20/20 cm, which is not capable of handling larger amount of sewage.

Armenia

The Karchevan

According to Seyran Minasyan, Head of RA Environmental Impact Monitoring Center state non-commercial organization, the situation of the water pollution is dissimilar to that of the pre-Soviet times, since the cause for pollution are now different.

Minasyan states that sewage waters are the main cause of negative impact on the Armenian rivers. “Then and now, Yerevan has had a population of around 1 million inhabitants. Even though the population has decreased, the waste water plant is not operating. Only mechanical treatment is implemented”, Minasyan says.

At the same time, the expert notes that due to the high self-purification potential of the Armenian rivers, the impact of the sewage waters on the trans boundary waters is basically insignificant. The velocity of the Armenian rivers and the morphology of the riverbed contribute to the saturation of oxygen and rapid self-purification rates.

“The part of the Debet river, where the sewage of Vanadzor is dumped, there is a high level of ammonium concentration. However, after 40-50 kilometers, this concentration is reduced, and before reaching the boundaries ofGeorgia, the waters are in fact treated. Thus, the organic and biological pollution of Khrami andKurarivers through the Debet river do not have any transboundary impact. Except for theriverofHrazdan, other rivers flowing across the RA territory, do not have any transboundary impact”, the expert says.

Before the confluence with Araks, the waters of the Hrazdan river do not manage to reach total self-purification, since the length is short – about 20 km. Therefore, there is a certain threat of biological and organic compound pollution on the trans boundary waters of the Araks via the Hrazdan river. The expert also believes that the pollution is also partly caused by the impacts of agriculture and cattle in the Ararat Valley.

“On the other hand, due to the lack of water treatment plants, when the Araks flows along the Armenian-Iranian border to the South of Armenia, it is already polluted along the Azerbaijani-Iranian border by the municipal and agricultural waste-water of Azerbaijani cities Nakhichevan, Ordubard, and the Iranian city of Julfa”, Minasyan adds.

The research, administered under the EU project, stresses that due to the higher level of population density and the low number of water treatment facilities, the pollution with organic compounds makes an issue for the Basin countries. “However the level of pollution is within the permissible limits. As compared to the annual rates of pollution of the Danube river waters, the level of pollution does not exceed the allowable limits”, the inception paper of the monitoring stresses.

Another principal pollutant of the basin waters is agriculture and cattle. However, the pressure from these factors has increasingly mitigated, as compared to the Soviet period.

“The surface of arable lands has drastically diminished on theterritory of Armenia, and the amount of the fertilizers used has decreased, leading to a multi-fold reduction in the amount of azotes, ammonium, phosphor concentration, as compared to the Soviet years,” Seyran Minasyan explains.

Minasyan reminds that previously there were about 700 plants running in Armenia, including large chemical industries.” Today most of these companies are in operational, while the ones that are operating do not have the same power, therefore their contribution to the water pollution is insignificant,” Martirosyan says.

The mining industry is recently developing in Armenia. According to the monitoring of water quality in the surface waters, the level of background pollution by the concentration of heavy metals is higher in some rivers, such as Debet, Voghji. However, the concentration of heavy metals is lower of the values, which are set by international commissions for the good quality of transboundary waters, for example for the Danube or Rhine.

“The maximum allowable concentration fixed at the Soviet times was 1 mg/l, which is now applied as a standard in Azerbaijan. In Europe, this limit should not exceed 100 mg/l for theriver of Reine. This is why the same concentration level in one country can be considered highly excessive, while in another country – fitting to the standard. This is a serious problem for the region,” Minasyan stresses.

According to the expert, a relatively high concentration of metals is observed in the Voghji and Debet waters, caused by the operation of the Copper-Molybdenum plant in Kajaran and the effluent discharge from the Akhtala ore mining plant, respectively. “However the transboundary impact of these pollutants are not significant, since the metal concentration diminishes when the rivers flow downstream, and across the inter-state border the concentration of metals in the  waters already meets the permissible limits”, Minasyan says.

The results of the EU monitoring indicate that level of background pollution by the concentration of heavy metals is higher in some rivers, such as Debet, Voghji. However, the concentration of heavy metals is lower of the values, which are set by international commissions for the good quality of transboundary waters, for example for the Danube orRhine.

According to the results of the joint Armenian-Iranian monitoring (2006-2011), the index of hydrogen concentration (pH) in Araks has barely changed since the Karchevan tributary is discharged in it.

Around the world, including Armenia, the mining industry operates at ore mining plants through closed water systems. This supposes installation of tailing dams, where the water generated from mine processing is stored. The closed system allows for sedimentation of the solid particles from the waters in the tailings dams, and the water can be consequently used for other causes.

In Agarak, everyone talked about the new facility, which would reduce the environmental threats. The talks concern the renovation of the tailing system, which seeks to process maximum amount of good metals from the water, and reuse the water for other purposes.

Mkhitar Zakaryan, the Mayor of Agarak assures that the construction is almost over.

“This is a unique technology for Armenia; likewise the environmental issues of the Megrhi region would be rectified. Since the Soviet times, sedimentation and water treatment was carried out in the tailing dumps. Now this does satisfy the European standards. With a new system the factory will meet the international standards, imposed by Europe,” says the Mayor.

According to Zakaryan, the cost for arranging the new tailing system is 4 million dollars and another 2 millions will be invested in it “to mitigate the danger caused to the environment.”

Azerbaijan

The Kura

The Kura meets the Araks and flows into the Caspian sea about200 kmaway from the largest industrial city ofAzerbaijan,Baku. The officials at the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan admit that the domestic and agricultural waste generated by the households and population at the near-shore area of the rivers cause local pollution.

The Kura and Araks flow jointly and separately across the most arable lands of Azerbaijan, where farmers cultivate crops and vegetables, including cotton. The farmers use organic and mined fertilizers, special chemicals against pests for cultivating the lands.

“In the low-land areas of Azerbaijan and the upstream areas of the Kara, the river is contaminated by biogenic substances, although the level of contamination is not so large. Many years ago the Ministry decided to apply biological methods of detecting biogenic effluents that cause degradation of the Kura and Araks rivers water quality,” says Matanat Avazova.

She says that it is difficult to prevent the farmers from discharging animal slurry, domestic and other waste in the river. “The people don’t want to pay the fee for waste management, while they recklessly dump the waste in the river,” she adds.

The journalists, who participated in the project for studying the pollution level of  the Kura and Araks, witnessed how the untreated household waste flows into the rivers through the small pipes that stretch from the Novuzlu village, located in the Salyan region of Azerbaijan.

The studies evidence that today it impossible to ensure absolute protection of the rivers of Azerbaijan from domestic and household waste. The pollutants generated from municipal waste and large households are conveyed into collectors and are treated near when they reach the sea, meanwhile the small settlements are in practice deprived of any treatment facilities.

The Azerbaijani Government adopted and implements a state policy for supplying its citizens with fresh water. Under this policy, permanent and portable wastewater treatment plants were constructed in the large urban areas. In the areas, where there are no water treatment plants, the villagers clean the waters of the river themselves.

At the same time, wastewater and sewage treatment, as well as solid waste recycling is experienced only in large urban areas of Azerbaijan. The inhabitants of towns and villages with small population pollute the waters of the river, not being subject to any punishment by the law enforcement bodies.

A little bit upstream from the Novuzlu village located in the Salyan region of Azerbaijan, Araks meets the Kura calmly and smoothly. However, due to the natural color difference, the two rivers flow separately and jointly. The dark-red waters of the Araks do not mix with the grey waters of the Kara for a long time.

The family of the young farmer Sahib Mehtiyev consists of his young wife and two children of a pre-school age. Sahib showed an old stone square filter in the shape of a cone to the journalists. This porous rock carved from limestone can store two buckets of river water. First, the water is left in the buckets until the stone particles are left over at the bottom of the bucket. In 24 hours, the water is filtered in the stone and drops completely clean into the container. The crystal clean water is drinkable, but the Metevins also boil the filtered water.

Matanat Avazova, Deputy Director of Monitoring Department for Environment Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan, believes that the government does it best for supplying freshwater to the residents of the low-land areas.

“Since 2007, about 200 modular water treatment plants have been installed in Azerbaijan. They ensure the treatment of river waters and the freshwater supply to the population. These facilities ensure the provision of drinking water to the inhabitants of low-land areas of  Azerbaijan amounting to about 500,000 people”, Avazova says.

Water Management Policy of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Transboundary cooperation

The 1992 Helsinki Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lake sand the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) are the international legal framework for transboundary water resources.

According to the WFD, member states develop management plans, establishing a programme of measures aimed to achieve good status of waters. For each river, standards for achieving concentrations near background values should be defined. The background concentration is the  natural condition of the river, when it is not subject to anthropogenic factors. This requirement implies setting measurement standards for defining the natural condition of the rivers and striving for their implementation  along the whole river basin. Under the WFD, the neighboring states should coordinate the water legislation for achieving a consensus.

The three South Caucasus have different water quality measurement standards.

Armenia

Since gaining its independence, Armenia has not signed any international convention on water resources management. However, as a successor state of the Soviet Armenia, the Republic of Armenia bears the obligations set out under the 1957 agreement with Iranand the 1927 agreement with Turkey. Under the agreement concluded with Turkey, the countries share equally all the common water resources along their borders, while under the agreement with Iran- the two states commit to the cleaning-up of the transboundary water and to regular exchange of information.

The 2007-2013 Country Strategy Paper guides Armenian in the EU-Armenia integration process. The paper commits the RA to implementing the measure, defined in the priority areas in compliance with the international and European standards and principles.

Seyran Minasyan, Head of RA Environmental Impact Monitoring Center state non-commercial organization, explains that headwaters and the waters of the streams have different biochemical background. This means that the condition of each tributary – upstream, middle stream and downstream – is different. At the source, the waters are in their natural condition, while the streams are already affected by anthropogenic factors, expressed in differently in different regions – agriculture, industry, etc.

The January 27, 2011 RA Government’s decree defines the 14 largest river basins of Armenia and the water quality measurement for surface waters of the river basins and their different parts. The measurement standards are based on the natural values of pollution and the permissible limits for separate parts. Thus, the decree provides for different quality standards for the same river. Under the standards, used at the Soviet times, every substance was classified by a single indicator – the highest indicating poor quality, the lowest – good. With the current standards, the quality of each surface water is divided into 5 classes, ranging from high, bad, normal and other classes.

Vladimir Narimanyan, Head of the Water Resources Management Agency at the RA Ministry of Environmental Protection says that the defined water quality standards are consonant to requirements of the EU Directive.

“Among the CIS countries, we are the only country, which has a system for ranking the water quality. We have to clean our waters so that the waters ranging in the 5^th category range in the 4^th, the ones of the 4^th– in the 3^rd up until the first”, Narimanyan explains”.

According to Narimanyan, the construction of a municipal sewage plant in Yerevan is a number one priority. “Moreover, not only the efforts ofArmenia, but of the whole region should be directed towards the construction of this plant”.

Narimanyan tells us that the all the water treatment plants should be re-built under the 30-years- long-term action plan set out in the National Water Programme of theRepublic of Armenia.

“At the moment the reconstruction process has started at the basin of the Lake Sevan, the water treatment plant of Jermuk is also being re-built. For this purpose we cooperate with international donor organization,” Narimanyan informs.

Narimanyan says that to avoid mutual accusation, a monitoring should be administered: “Let’s monitor each other and define the background pollution levels.”

Since 2005,Armenia implements a joint monitoring with Iran. For already 12 years, water samples are collected and analyzed in the laboratories.

“The results of the Armenian-Iranian monitoring showed that the human exposure in Armenia meets the permissible levels. We are now planning to monitor all the bordering waters jointly with Azerbaijan,” Narimanyan says.

Water management expert Vahagn Tonoyan says that under a UNDP project, “Reducing Transboundary Degradation in the Kura/Aras River Basin”, within 2005-2007 the experts in the field sought to define the existing transboundary issues and to assess the current state, including the water quality and the level of ecological degradation.

“But when the pollution had to be evidenced by factual data, it turned out that it was very difficult, since after the collapse of the Soviet Union the hydrological monitoring systems of all the countries were significantly damaged,” Tonoyan says.

According to the EU monitoring results, there are 100 hydrological observatories inArmenia, 88 – in Azerbaijan, 9 – in Georgia.  There are 50 water-sampling stations in Azerbaijan, 131- in Armenia and 25 – in Georgia. The water quantity is measured at the hydrological observatories, while the water quality is analyzed at the sampling stations.

The installation of sampling stations is contingent upon different standards and a certain logic. For example, they should be constructed before and after large urban areas and industrial plants to identify their impact on the rivers. To get the whole picture, water samples are collected from the stations twelve times a year.

To determine the accuracy of the laboratory studies in SC countries, 1.2 EURO was provided to the countries under an EU project. The laboratory equipment purchased under the project should identify the composition of the water substances. Afterwards the water brought from Slovenia was sent for analysis in the laboratories of the three countries. The results of the analysis  substantially differed.

According to the EU inception papers, which present the monitoring results,Armenia’s studies were the most valid.

“The data are not reliable. When one of the parties accuses the other that the values are not valid in terms of one standard, the same party provides a value that differs 50 times in terms of another parameter,” Tonoyan says.

In the frames of this investigation, Anatoly Pichugin, Coordinator of the EU Programme, answered to the questions of the Armenian journalist by email. He, specifically, noted that Armenia, Azerbaijanand Georgia have different systems and standards of water quality measurement. “Another thing is that the water quality data generated by the countries are often inadequate and unreliable. Therefore the results of water quality assessment produced by the countries are not in fact comparable with each other. Also, the current approaches/criteria for water quality assessment used in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan are very different from the approach/criteria used in the European Union” Pichugin stresses.

In its conclusion on the monitoring project, the EU stresses that one of the main issues of the water resources management in the SC is the lack of any bi-lateral inter-governmental agreement providing for cooperation on water resources management.

“The lack of common policies and approaches has resulted in different misunderstanding and arguable findings,” the conclusion stresses.

Azerbaijan

The Kura

Azerbaijan uses Soviet standards of water quality measurement. The standards were defined in 1988 by the USSR Ministry of Health.

Environmentalist Telman Zeynalov answered to the question about the application of the Soviet water quality standards in Azerbaijan. He noted that the USSR used high-level environmental standards. “Azerbaijani officials prefer to apply the Soviet standards of water quality, which is justified and there is no sense in changing them,” the expert says.

Matanat Avazova, Deputy Director of Monitoring Department for Environment Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan is aware of the conflict between the SC countries due to the differences in measurements by the three countries. In response to the Azerbaijani statements about the pollution of the Kura, the Georgians refer to the differences in the quality standards, and highlight them as the main reason for the incompliance between the data provided by Azerbaijan and Georgia.

In Azerbaijan, the water quality is observed thou 72 automatic monitoring networks, located in 43 water sites – 27 on rivers, 4 on dams, 11 on lakes and 1 – on the seashore. In compliance with the approved methodology, regular water sampling and testing is carried out on these sites, the official website of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan indicates.

Every 2 months the Ministry stores the monitoring results of the Kuraand Araks rivers on the eco.gov.az website. The waters are monitored against 4 main standards – flow speed (m/sec), concentration of copper, phenols and dissolved oxygen c in one liter of water. The level of dissolved oxygen in the two rivers has always been within the normal range. The results of the monitoring of the oxygen level have always met the accepted standards (5,34 – 6,64 mg/l), while the concentration of phenols (the standard norm is 0,001 mg/l) and copper always exceed the permissible limits by 3 or 4 times.

Water resources expert Rafik Verdiyev does not believe that the application of different quality standards is an obstacle for the cooperation between environmentalists.

“The problem is not in the standards. And with this, I mean the level of dangerous effluents in the water. The countries may apply different methods, but in all the cases, the level, for example of phosphor that exceeds the maximum allowable level is not allowable.”

Verdiyev stresses that the EU Directive sets a requirement for having a ranking system for water quality. “If we proceed from this standard, none of the SC rivers, maybe except for some small high-mountainous tributaries, comply to the EU requirements”, the expert says.

Even thoughAzerbaijanuses the Soviet standards of water quality, the possible application of new standards is now being discussed.

“After long discussions, the EU suggested to all of the post-Soviet countries apply new water quality standards. Azerbaijani officials did not say “no” to this, even though they made some remarks. A commission is now set inAzerbaijanfor developing these standards. I think that thatAzerbaijanhas a positive opinion towards the EU standards,” Verdiyev notes.

Reflecting on the issue of regional cooperation between the environmentalists, the expert stressed that there is a total lack of bilateral cooperation between Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts, though they are involved in multi-lateral programs.

 

Kamal Ali, Anna Muradyan, Yuri Manvelyan