YEREVAN. – Fortunately for us, today we do not have an area that has turned green [in algae] at small [Lake] Sevan, and few areas have turned green at big [Lake] Sevan; let’s hope it will recede on its own. Vahe Jilavyan, acting Minister of Environment of Armenia, mentioned this Wednesday during a meeting with journalists.

According to him, the government has given very strict instructions to take all measures and to submit programs on what should be done so that Lake Sevan does not have a green-algae area, or there will be very little, next year.

In her turn, Gayane Shahnazaryan, Deputy Director of the Environmental Monitoring and Information Center, said as follows: "[Lake] Sevan’s 'flourishing' processes, which had started in June in previous years, started on July 15 this year. Depending on the weather, the 'flourishing' process started late [this year] and will end soon. We have a bad ecological situation in [Lake] Sevan (…). (…) we have a sufficient amount of biomaterials in the lake; this means that the condition of the lake is not very bad, but it is not good either.”

It was also mentioned that Armenia is expected to receive a grant of 5mn euros from the EU regarding the Lake Sevan issue. "Three specific programs are being discussed within the framework of the grant. One of them is the construction of a plant for the treatment of wastewater flowing from the communities. The second is a waste recycling program, and the third is the cleaning of rivers from household waste," she said.