System Failure: Draining Strategic Aquifers for Short-Term Profit

2026-01-25 - 21:06

Listen to the AI generated audio article. Your browser does not support the audio element. The Ararat plain, extending between the capital Yerevan to the Turkish border, is the heart of Armenia’s agriculture sector. Home to around 500,000 people, the two regions of Ararat and Armavir collectively account for nearly 40% of the country’s agricultural output and produce nearly 60% of its fruits and more than 85% of its vegetables. Despite the plain being semi-arid and most at-risk of desertification, the fertile plain is home to around 80% of Armenia’s fish farms. The overuse of the groundwater reserves for fish farming here has rapidly depleted them, causing much concern. Starting from the mid-2000s, a large number of fish farms sprang up in the plain using water from the massive underground aquifer through deep boreholes. Despite years of warnings from environmental specialists and activists, overuse continued through the 2010s, bringing the basin to the brink of an ecological catastrophe. Only in the past year have authorities begun taking limited steps to address the problem. The Early Warnings As early as 2007, it was becoming clear that the Ararat Artesian Basin was being severely mismanaged due to uncontrolled fish farming operations. A report noted at the time that fisheries are highly profitable and mostly belong to high-ranking officials and hence there is no oversight, which is causing environmental destruction for private profit at public expense. A 2010 Hetq investigation found that many large fish farms are owned or backed by high-ranking officials and oligarchs, including Gagik Tsarukyan, Samvel Aleksanyan, and then parliament speaker Hovik Abrahamyan. Deputy Chair of the State Revenue Committee Tigran Barseghyan’s ownership was revealed in 2013. While authorities had tried to limit permits for new wells and fish farms, regulations requiring water meters were being circumvented and new wells continued to be drilled. By 2012, the government considered fish farming a priority sector of the economy. Armenia’s fish exports (in tons) While then Environment Minister Aramayis Grigoryan announced in 2014 that groundwater levels in the Ararat plain had risen following the closure of illegal wells, most of those wells were already inactive and had not been extracting water, meaning the measure had little real impact. That same year, a USAID study found that groundwater in the Ararat Artesian Basin—a vital source for irrigation, fish farming, and drinking water—had been critically overexploited. While Soviet-era studies (1984) set a sustainable abstraction limit of 34.7 cubic meters per second, by 2013 actual use had reached 55.6 cubic meters per second, driven largely by the rapid expansion of fish farms. This overuse caused widespread declines in groundwater levels, drying up of artesian wells and springs, reduced flow in the Metsamor River, and potential risks to the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant’s cooling system. The report urged immediate restrictions on groundwater extraction to sustainable levels, modernization of fisheries to closed or semi-closed water systems, closure of illegal wells, and strict water-use permitting based on updated hydrogeological data. A map of the fish farms in the Ararat basin (in blue) Source. Delayed Government Response In August 2019, five years after the report, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan acknowledged the industry’s water sustainability challenge, suggesting that Armenia consumes about $1 billion worth of water annually to produce only $150-200 million worth of fish. He emphasized that the government cannot abandon either the water resources or the established fish farming sector without harming the economy, so they will implement gradual measures to find a balanced solution. The crisis, however, has only exacerbated since then. Deputy Environment Minister Gayane Gabrielyan warned three years later that the underground basin, at the current rate, will be depleted in just 7-8 years. With 3.6 billion cubic meters of water total, annual consumption of 1.6 billion and natural recharge of 1.1 billion cubic meters, overuse creates an annual deficit of 0.5 billion cubic meters. She noted that the basin is the cleanest, safest, and most strategically important water resource in Armenia. Fish farms extract pristine water from deep underground, use it briefly, then discharge it into drainage systems, thus permanently losing this strategic resource. In 2022, an interdepartmental working group created by the Environment Minister conducted a comprehensive study of the Ararat plain’s underground water resources and compliance with water use permit conditions. It found a total of 1,873 total deep wells in the Ararat and Armavir regions, of which 1,217 wells were currently operating. Less than 40% or 484 wells were found to have water use permits. Only a mere 71 (6%) had water meters and 302 (25%) had valves installed. This led to massive illegal water extraction of 24,135 liters per second, more than three times the permitted extraction level of 7,584 liters per second. Based on the results, the Environment Ministry announced targets to eliminate illegal deep wells by 2030. Concrete Steps at Last The Pashinyan government has only begun to take more serious steps in recent years. Amendments made to Armenia’s Water Code in mid-2022 required fish farms that use underground fresh water accessed via boreholes to conduct operations using a closed recirculating system. Approved by the government in early June, the amendments passed parliament in July 2022. The regulation remained unenforced, however. In August 2023, the government signaled its intention to actively require fish farms to operate on a closed-loop water circulation system, meaning water will be filtered and reused instead of being discharged. On November 9, 2023 the government approved draft laws which entail administrative penalties for non-compliance and warned that without these measures, the region faces an imminent environmental and socio-economic disaster that would threaten its drinking water supply. Parliament approved the bills within two weeks. Despite protests from fish farm owners, Pashinyan seemed persistent. At a discussion at the Ministry of Environment, Pashinyan said, “If we need fish, we can obtain it from elsewhere, but if we need water, we cannot bring it from elsewhere. This is a matter of national security.” To address business concerns, the Ministry held discussions with industry representatives. The government additionally established implementation procedures in a December 28, 2023 decree. The industry did not back down. In April 2024, three fish farm operators filed an administrative case challenging the government regulation and in mid-May court granted an interim measure, suspending the government decree until the final verdict. They cited procedural violations, impracticality, technical deficiencies, conflicts with other laws and codes, and severe economic impact. The government unsuccessfully challenged the suspension, but on September 12, 2025, the court issued a final decision rejecting the claims and upholding the validity of the government decree. It found that the regulation is suitable for achieving its environmental protection objective and applies uniformly to all fish farms using groundwater, creating equal conditions for all operators. Claimants have now filed an appeal and the interim suspension remains in effect pending final appellate decision. Change of Strategy? This July, the Pashinyan government endorsed a new package of amendments that would remove mandatory closed recirculation systems for fish farms and instead implement water allocation quotas based on priority uses, require environmental impact assessments for water use permits, and incentivize voluntary adoption of recirculation systems through longer permit terms. The authorities thus expect sustainable groundwater management aligned with actual renewable resources and basin recovery. Following resistance from fish farms to adopt a closed-loop water system by 2024, the Environment Ministry’s water policy chief Lilit Abrahamyan stated that the government has proposed what she described as a simplified measure to effectively cut their current water use permits by 40% instead, a step expected to save over 340 million cubic meters of water annually. During the parliamentary debates in September, Deputy Minister of Environment Ara Mkrtchyan suggested that the reduction in groundwater levels is due to multiple factors, especially climate change, not just (mis)management. Sisak Gabrielyan, a deputy from the ruling party, questioned whether Armenia should even be a major fish producer given its limited water resources, and asked if the government plans to help fish farmers transition. Mkrtchyan agreed this is a fair question and said the law is a first step toward balancing use, while longer-term strategies are under discussion with the Ministry of Economy. The amendments passed parliament on November 13. Deputy Minister of Environment Ara Mkrtchyan explained that the volume of renewable groundwater in the Ararat plain has been corrected from 1.1 billion cubic meters per year to the actual figure of 926 million cubic meters per year and the reduced amount will be distributed among water users according to priority directions and quotas. Whether the reduced quotas prove sufficient remains to be seen. The persistent unwillingness by successive administrations to meaningfully address the issue warrants skepticism. Yet for the first time, authorities appear genuinely aware of the scale of the potential catastrophe. The question is no longer whether action is needed, but whether it will come soon enough. Time, like the groundwater itself, is running out. In this episode of “It Has to Be Said”, Maria Titizian explains why preserving the Ararat Artesian Basin isn’t just an environmental problem, it’s a national security crisis. 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