With the support of the Swiss Development Corporation, and the participation of the Armenian community of Iran, we are charged with finding a sustainable and practical way to assure water flow to the residents of two villages on Armenia’s border with Iran. These very old villages, cut off from the world, depend on ancient water systems which have been in use in this region for centuries. The challenge now is to help them develop the social infrastructure to maintain the physical infrastructure which we will help them renovate.

Our last visit to Alvank and Shvanidzor was in June 2008 and that’s when we started to think and work on the initial project proposal for these communities. After a few months of planning, writing, consulting, here we are on the road to Meghri with our first introductory trip. There’s a lot on the schedule and a challenging project ahead, but overall it’s exciting that in several months, the water needs of two border-communities will be met.

Armed with the all the possible project related materials, a photo and a video camera and understanding that this trip marks the start of a new phase of this project we started our drive towards the southernmost region of Armenia –Meghri.

When you look at the map Armenia seems like a tiny country, it takes a trip to Meghri to realize that appearances can be deceiving and despite the map it’s a major undertaking to make the trip from Yerevan to the southernmost point of Armenia. It is in this context one cannot help to realize that the cost of transport will easily eat into the profit margin of any good produced in Meghriand shipped to Yerevan.

The trip becomes more bearable with an overnight stay in Goris and continue early in the morning, which is what we decided to do, except it snowed hard that night and we woke up to a serious amount of snow on the ground.

The road from Goris to Meghri passes through the Shikahogh state reserve and at some points at altitude above the treeline. Blossoming trees in Meghriare in stark contrast with roofs covered with snow in Goris. What a difference a thousand meter in altitude makes.

The actual complex barbed wire mechanism in place on the border with Iran is reminiscent of the Soviet iron curtain and makes you think that some things never change.

With more than 400 km roads behind us we reached our first beneficiary community – Alvank, a community of 451 and our first stop. Varuzhan, the mayor of the community, has been waiting for us the whole day and earlier warned us by telephone that it snowed through the night and that it’ll be harder to get to Meghri from Goris.

We sat down with the community mayor and the employers of the Alvank community administration to discuss the project and understand their perspective on our approach. Varuzhan, presented the recent developments and described a project they have recently completed that has partially enhanced the water supply of the community and somewhat improved the infrastructure of the chahrezes in some places.

Despite on the improvements the issue of chahreze cleanup and maintenance is still acute and the local capacity to clean and uphold the system was never developed. According to the mayor the system has been cleaned up eight years ago and since then, although there were attempts to clean-up based on the local know how the results were insignificant as the capacity was never developed. Varuzhan was excited to learn that there is chance to improve the water supply of the community.

On the issue of community meetings and a water management system based on realistic dues, the mayor told us the story of his attempts to raise the dues collected for water usage from 200 drams annually per household to 300 drams and he had a very fierce opposition among the leadership of the community, to the point where he had to give up this initiative. But in the overall discussion everyone understood that this issue is very important and needs to be solved. The mayor was eager to cooperate and considered the community meetings a very important step, as he thinks that the community together should decide on an acceptable solution and a mechanism.

After making arrangements for our next steps we visited the chahrezes to see the recent developments and get a feeling on the current system.

With a decision on our next steps we set off to our second beneficiary community – Shvanidzor, a community of 318, located 3 km from Armenia-Iran state border.

Our initial assessment that water problems in Shvanidzor were more serious were true, but on the other hand during this visit we understood that Shvanidzor is also at a different developmental phase in terms of chanhreze support and infrastructure. The mayor had plans to build a reservoir for chlorination of the water and based on financial support of different other organizations had cleaned up some of the chahrezes. During our conversation he pointed out that the community during the recent years has developed some capacity in maintenance and clean-up which needs further development. He also agreed with our assessment that the water dues should become more realistic for the community to be able to use the water sustainably. He was willing to raise the water dues that today are 200 drams per person annually. Unlike Alvank, the community of Shvanidzor had a its chahrezes cleaned up several times during the last 5-6 years, according to the mayor some of these projects were fully successful, while others further ruined  the overall system. He was ready to cooperate, albeit with caution at the beginning telling us stories about failed clean-ups. Recently the community was able to secure financing to improve the chahreze network. They were able to make some improvements, bur were short in funds to make the whole system work properly. He mentioned two of the most pressing issues – chlorination of the water supplied to the households and creation of a water reservoir to collect water during the high water season to use it during August and September, when the water in chahrezes dries out.

The mayor was eager to show us around the chahreze system and was ready to cooperate in any way possible.

With a small tour of the existing chahreze in the center of the village and the mayor’s plans to expand the community’s tiny reservoir, we decided on the next steps of the project and said goodbye, with resolution to return and continue where we left off.

To be able to provide you with additional information like the background information on each of these communities, more photos and videos, we created a password protected area on our website. Please use the following link, SDC as username and syunik248 as passowrd to access this area.

If you have any questions and/or comments please do not hesitate to contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it