The authorities say it is impossible to repair the water supply without liberating the Kherson region. So, how does Mykolaiv live where salt water flows through the pipes? What will happen in winter when the rescue wells freeze? What solutions does the city already have, and which still does not? All this was analyzed by Rubryka.
"First they take water, then life"
Korabelnyy. District on the Mykolaiv outskirts. The same one to which almost all russian attempts at "denazification" reach without problems. Due to the too-close location of the district to the occupied Kherson Oblast, the air defense system does not always have time to operate before another missile takes another life.
Svitlana leads us between the houses under the still-hot summer sun. The woman straightens her unruly hair and, before talking about water, quite expertly talks about the specifics of the weapons with which the enemies are destroying her hometown. She says that living in the front-line zone, whether you like it or not, you start to understand such things.
"We are already used to this. We have strikes first and air raid alerts after. Sometimes the opposite happens – the alert is over, and after 5 minutes, you are stuck in the corridor again because the windows are shaking. Another missile.
If it comes from the sea, the air alarm works perfectly. If it's the artillery or how they changed the S-300, it is booming somewhere in the region, and all the telegram channels are already writing: "Explosions are heard in Mykolaiv — stay in shelters." Then it bangs again, and only then — air alarm.
Here, everyone hides whenever possible. Even when I go for a walk with my dog and hear an air alarm, I immediately look for an open entrance. We always keep ours open. It's just an opportunity for someone to save their life," Svitlana says trivially.
And recently, the woman says, a missile killed her husband and son near her house – they were unloading water that had just been collected from a well from a car and did not have time to hide.
"First, they take water, and then life," the woman concludes bitterly.
While talking, we approach the water and humanitarian aid allocation point. As soon as the water pipe that supplied water to Mykolaiv was cut off, wells began to be dug in the city. At first, they hoped that they would be able to restore the regular water supply, but it did not work out. Then technical water was supplied to the pipes, but you can't drink it. Therefore, drinking water is also delivered by utility workers and volunteers. The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Senkevych, tells us why one well is not enough.
"Now we take water from the ground. We make wells. Unfortunately, our underground resources are also small. We expected to extract about half of that water from the ground and add it to the water we now pipe. But, unfortunately, the water debit turned out to be five times smaller than we expected. That is why we distribute this water to people in cars.
You've probably seen people walking around with big water bottles like this. They go and collect drinking water to cook and drink. It is free, but in any case, it is inconvenient," says Oleksandr Senkevych.
Mykolaiv's mayor Oleksandr Senkevych
Unsuitable for consumption
Meanwhile, Doctor of Technical Sciences and Head of the Department of Ecology and Environmental Protection Technologies of Admiral Makarov University, Anna Trokhymenko, explains in more detail how the water supply works and what happened to it:
"The primary source of water supply for Mykolaiv was Dnipro surface waters. The water intake is located in the village of Nikolske, Kherson region. Water is supplied by the pumping station of the 0th ascent to the pumping station of the 1st ascent through two 73 km long water lines and from there to the water treatment facilities. The pumping station of the II rise supplies water to the Korabelny district and to the pumping station of the III rise. From there, through a thousand kilometers of water supply networks, the water reaches pumping stations, and then — for consumption by the population and to meet the production needs of the city's enterprises.
Today, part of the main water pipe is damaged, and military operations and constant shelling make it impossible to repair and inspect the damage. Also, the water intake is still located in the territory controlled by the enemy," says Hanna Trokhymenko.
Hanna Trokhymenko
To restore the technical water supply, pipelines were brought to the Southern Buh River. But the purification system, which was suitable for the Dnipro, cannot fully purify the water from the Buh. Oleksandr Senkevych emphasizes that this is not a matter of government priorities but a matter of technical capabilities. But how serious is this problem in general?
Resident Svitlana says:
"Technical water exceeds the permitted level of salt. We have all the dishes covered with limescale. I forgot to rinse the pan with clean water and have a salt layer on it. It is also impossible to brush your teeth with such water. Take a glass of water, add a tablespoon of salt, and you will know what kind of water is in our pipes. It is very inconvenient to wash with it. You can't cook food with it either."
When we talk to locals waiting for water from volunteers, some joke that a trip to the shower replaces a trip to the sea, and others complain that they have skin problems from such water. But the mayor emotionally rejects such theses:
"I take a shower with the same water in my pipes. Sometimes I have salt on my watch strap. But, as you can see, my hair does not fall out. We cannot enchant water. I tell everyone that the restoration of the previous level of water supply will be in two weeks after the de-occupation of Kherson. Do you know when Kherson will be liberated? Neither do I.
Health and life are the most important things. Therefore, if people believe that being in Mykolaiv, they will slowly die because of the water, let them go to another city. From the first day of the war, I have been telling everyone to get out of here, get out of this place. As long as there is a war here, it is still dangerous here," says Senkevych.
Mykolaiv's mayor Oleksandr Senkevych
Previously, Mykolaiv had an alternative source of water supply — the Zhovtneve reservoir, which was fed from the Ingulets irrigation canal.
However, later the level of pollution in the reservoir increased greatly. Mine waters of Kryvorizhstal contributed to this. In addition, the water level of Ingulets has decreased. So in 2006, the reservoir was liquidated.
"To date, pipelines have been installed that bring water from the Dnipro-Buzka estuary to the existing treatment facilities. However, at water treatment plants, the water treatment process includes a classic scheme, according to which water is brought up to normative indicators, which was built in accordance with the input parameters of Dnipro water: filtering, coagulation, disinfection, and settling.
According to some of them, the chemical indicators of the quality of the Dnipro freshwater differ by orders of magnitude from the indicators of the water quality of the salty estuary: the mineralization of the Dnipro water does not exceed 500 mg/l (at the norm, not more than 1000 mg/l), and the Dnipro-Buzka estuary from 10,000 to 30,000 mg/l, hardness should be no more than 7 mg-eq/l, and in the estuary, it ranges from 15 to 30 mg-eq/l, which in principle complicates the process of reverse osmosis water purification. According to the classic scheme, such water cannot be cleaned with existing treatment facilities," says expert Hanna Trokhymenko.
Osmos, money and Kherson Oblast
Therefore, the existing cleaning system does not cope. Back in May, the Cabinet of Ministers allocated 56 million hryvnias to restore the water supply. The mayor of Mykolaiv says that this money does not fundamentally affect the situation. And that the construction of a new purification system is impossible for two main reasons — the ongoing hostilities and the too-high final cost of a liter of purified water.
"The previously allocated 56 million have not yet reached us, by the way. We understand that this money will not be useful to us. We will not be able to restore the water supply with this money. But we need this money to reduce the number of expenses because we have built a network. No network took water from the Southern Buh. We built it at the expense of the enterprise and local funds.
In addition, the main criterion of these works is the cost of the final liter of water. In fact, today, we can purify water with reverse osmosis and establish these installations. But we will get that a cube of water instead of 21 hryvnias, as now, will cost 900 hryvnias at the final stage. This cannot be allowed. And today, we are talking about actually scientifically finding the cheapest way to purify water," says Oleksandr Senkevych.
Mykolaiv's mayor Oleksandr Senkevych
If we describe this water purification method in a simplified way, it is the passage of contaminated tap water through filters under pressure. Reverse osmosis systems use thin-film composite membranes consisting of barrier and auxiliary layers. This method of water purification is one of the most effective. But not everything is so simple.
As Hanna Trokhymenko explains, water purification by reverse osmosis has a number of disadvantages. The expert highlights the following:
- the large sizes of the system, due to which it is often problematic to install it;
- high cost — it is necessary not only to buy the device but also to change the filters regularly;
- a large amount of "waste" – from 1 to 7 liters of contaminated water is received for 1 liter of purified water, which flows into the sewer or is recycled;
- the need to maintain the pressure in the system within 2.8–6 atm, which requires the installation of additional equipment;
- the need to pre-clean the water before forcing it to the reverse osmosis membrane is of great importance since the service life of the membrane element depends on it.
The professor says all this makes the implementation and use of reverse osmosis installations expensive. However, the woman emphasizes that the situation is not as hopeless as the authorities describe it.
"Today, there are compact container plants that allow you to reduce the length of the water pipeline, which in turn reduces the costs of transporting water and the electricity required for this, do not require capital expenditures for the premises, and the initial salty concentrate can be mixed with sewage effluents or discharged downstream into the estuary.
But the installation of such equipment already depends on government structures, which do not sufficiently contribute to solving this issue at the state level," says Hanna Trokhymchuk.
Meanwhile, residents of Mykolaiv continue to draw water from wells and receive it from volunteers and utility workers. In winter, wells will freeze. However, Mykolaiv is already preparing for this – the number of water distribution points has been increased to 130 and will probably be increased further.
Oleksandr Senkevych, like Vitaly Kim, continues to talk about restoring the old water supply almost immediately after the liberation of Kherson Oblast. But there is another problem here – the extent of the damage is not really known, so it is not clear what the recovery time will be.
"It is almost impossible to determine the deadlines, even though experts will have access to the necessary territories and water supply. It depends on the degree of damage to the water main, on the enemy's threats to blow up critical infrastructure, which includes both the water main and the water intake in the Kherson region, and the time it takes to flush all pipelines in the city of Mykolaiv with fresh water.
And also, the unknown degree of damage to the water supply system in the city with such harsh operation under the conditions of using estuarine salt water is unknown, hence the time for repair work on the pipeline and equipment," concludes Hanna Trokhymenko.
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