They want to reconstruct the Zhovtneve Reservoir in Mykolaiv for tens of millions of euros

They want to restore the operation of the Zhovtneve Reservoir in Mykolaiv, which has been inactive for 16 years, by carrying out its complete reconstruction.

This is stated in the article by NikVesti «Water issue in Mykolaiv. Is it possible to restore the October Reservoir and how will it help the city?».

As you know, the issue of restoring the Zhovtneve Reservoir was discussed during the meeting of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities under the President of Ukraine in September of this year. According to the results of the meeting, the head of Mykolayiv RMA Vitalii Kim said that this is one of the «big projects» that the authorities want to implement.

Commenting on this thesis, the general director of Mykolaivvodokanal Borys Dudenko then said that about 300 million hryvnias are needed to restore the Zhovtneve Reservoir in Mykolaiv. According to him, filling the reservoir will help to provide Mykolaiv residents with water in winter: «We propose to fill our reservoir, which was stopped 16 years ago. We want to fill it in the state in which it is now. At that time, we plan to restore the pressure pipelines and pumping stations that supplied water to the treatment facilities, and thus have a source of water supply that will provide us in the winter period.»

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According to him, the project is currently under discussion. Making a decision on its implementation depends on the state authorities, since the Mykolaiv Oblast will not be able to implement the project on its own, at the expense of the city and regional budgets. In the case of the approval of the restoration project of the Zhovtneve Reservoir, it may take about three months to complete the work on its implementation, Borys Dudenko noted in September.

In a comment to NikVesti, the deputy head of Mykolayiv RMA Valentyn Haidarzhy noted that the regional authorities have turned to relevant ministries regarding this issue.

— Currently, the issue is under consideration, correspondence is ongoing, informed the Mykolaiv RMA.

Borys Dudenko, director of Mykolaivvodokanal, told NikVesti that in addition to state bodies, the French company «Egis» is working on the possibility of resuming the operation of the reservoir.

— While the concept is at the stage of discussion. This issue is also being worked on by Egis, a French company that, since the beginning of the year, has been engaged in processing alternative sources of water supply for the city. That is, they will also work on this issue, but it is still multifactorial. Many things need to be taken into account there: technology, water storage, supply. Quite a serious engineering project. And only now is the study underway and the search for funding sources is being conducted in parallel, said Borys Dudenko.

Borys Dudenko, the director of Mykolaivvodokanal, said that there are actually two options for resuming the operation of the reservoir — the cost of one is about 300 million hryvnias. This will help to carry out the primary work and fill the reservoir with water for several months. It was with such a proposal that the company turned to Mykolayiv RMA.

Another proposal also under discussion is a complete reconstruction, effectively building the reservoir «from scratch.» Here we are already talking about tens of millions of euros, according to Borys Dudenko.

— When I spoke about 300 million, it was necessary to fill the reservoir in the form it is. No decision was made. It was decided to finalize the issue of complete reconstruction, roughly speaking, the construction of a new reservoir structure at the same place. Not as it is, roughly speaking, the earth, that's all. It will already be a full-fledged reservoir with waterproofing. Now I can't talk about the sums needed to build a new one. I would not use these figures now, because they are very conditional,» said Borys Dudenko.

The Zhovtneve reservoir in the Vitovskyi district, near the Kulbakyne microdistrict, was built in 1957 and was used as a strategic supply of fresh water for the industrial and domestic water supply of Mykolaiv.

The project of the Upper Inhulets irrigation system, which included the Zhovtneve reservoir, was developed by the Odesa branch of «Ukrdiprokomunbud» in 1954. Its volume at the time of the start of operation was 15 thousand m3, and later it grew to 32 thousand m3 of water (at maximum filling), and the depth in some places was up to 28 meters. It was filled annually, in the autumn-winter period (160 days), with Dnieper and Inhulets water.

In 2006, as a result of the slow water exchange, siltation of the reservoir occurred, and the mineralization of the water increased significantly. Along with the appearance in the water of a strong putrid smell, which turns into mercaptan, there was an increase in the color of the water from 30 to 75 degrees, the dry residue from 300 mg/dm3 to 1120 mg/dm3, the content of chlorides and sulfates doubled, oxidation.

The city management made a decision to drain water from the Zhovtneve Reservoir to clean the silt layer. In addition, maintenance and protection of the reservoir became unaffordable for the city budget. In this regard, the Mykolaiv city government, whose mayor was Volodymyr Chaika at the time, repeatedly appealed to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine regarding the allocation of state subsidies for the implementation of restoration works to ensure the operation of the October Reservoir. However, at that time this issue was not too urgent for the state authorities.

In 2008, the project to clean and restore the reservoir was postponed. For 8 years, no one raised the question of the feasibility of carrying out works on the restoration of the reservoir, neither in the city nor at the state level.

In 2016, a video shot by a quadcopter was published on the network, showing the territory of the «Zhovtneve Sea», as the reservoir was called. In 2018, journalists of the «Inter» TV channel filmed a story where they showed that a landfill had already formed on the territory of the former reservoir.

In 2020, the problem of restoration of the Zhovtneve Reservoir was raised to a new level by Olena Kiseliova, a member of the Mykolaiv City Council. At that time, she expressed the opinion that the utility company Mykolaivvodokanal should seriously address the problem with water reserves and restore the operation of the Zhovtneve Reservoir.