Advisor to Yerevan Mayor: City needs new storm drainageAdvisor to Yerevan Mayor: City needs new storm drainagev

YEREVAN, June 25. /ARKA/. Yerevan’s storm collector system is flawed, Kamo Areyan, Advisor to the Mayor of Yerevan, said on Tuesday.

A recent hearing in the Yerevan City Council touched upon the heavy rains that flooded numerous quarters of the Armenian capital despite large subsidies on upgrading the city’s storm drainage in recent years.

Areyan noted that the system was leased to the Veolia Jur company. On behalf of the mayor, a study was carried out in the capital, the inventory was completed and the result should be presented to the government and donors with the aim of building a new storm drainage system.

“As a result of the inventory, it turned out that there are areas where there is no storm drainage system. There are also systems that need to be reconstructed, since new developments have caused the need to expand the storm drainage systems,” Areyan noted.

As for the latest downpours, Areyan noted that the precipitation was above normal; the surface drainage system could not have absorbed so much water.

Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan added that for years the mayor’s office has not implemented major programs in this area. The recent works began in 2022-2023 and involved quarters where there is no drainage at all, for example, the Mushavan quarter.

“We have discussed a revision of the contractual terms with the Veolia Jur company, which will allow rent to be used for investment, and this will mitigate the problems we are talking about. Of course, we are not talking about force majeure, because the same force majeure occurred in the UAE, a country with the most developed infrastructure and they also could not cope with the situation,” Avinyan said.