A matter for future generations: Vodokanal restored 3 out of 1,200 km of pipes destroyed by salt water in Mykolaiv

Excavation of the water pipeline along Troitskyi Street in Mykolaiv, August 2024, photo NikVesti

As of August 2024, Mykolaivvodokanal employees have replaced only about 3 kilometers of water mains damaged by salt water out of a total of 1,200 kilometers in the city.

This is stated in the article NikVesti «Mykolaiv flows. For two years, how has the water utility been struggling with accidents on the water network, which is «killed» by salt water?».

This is quite a long process, assures the technical manager of the water supply service of «Mykolaivvodokanal» Oleksii Ababilov. After all, he explained, for the replacement of pipe sections, a tender must first be announced and a project for the execution of the work developed.

For example, when replacing pipes, it is sometimes necessary to demolish several trees, deal with the situation of self-development, or coordinate the city's underground communications.

«It is impossible to dig 500 meters of pipes in two days. This is not a quick process,» added Oleksii Ababilov.

It is impossible to say for sure how long it will take to replace the entire water network in the city, says the technical manager of the company's water supply service.

«It is possible to do it, but I don't know how much time it will take. I believe that your generation can finish it if we start it and put it on wheels. We are trying to make it so, but it is a long process,» he added.

However, these works continue today. Currently, Vodokanal is preparing 43 network replacement projects for implementation in the coming years, Oleksii Ababilov said.

«There, the pipe can be 1.5 kilometers, or it can be 300 meters. There is a lot of work. These are just plans. I don't know what we will realize in a year. That is, if from this we implement 10 projects in a year, that will be good,» he said.

Why was there salt water in Mykolaiv in March?

Mykolaiv was left without water for some time after the Dnieper aqueduct was damaged. Later, salt water from the estuary was introduced into the network, and today the city receives river water. In terms of its quality, it is inferior to the Dnieper river, but it is still better than the Lyman river. In this way, almost half a million people in Mykolaiv receive better quality technical water in their homes, says the explainer of NikVesti «Why is the water salty again in Mykolaiv? We explain.»

But since the beginning of March 2024, the people of Mykolaiv noticed that the quality of the water in the taps worsened — it became saltier and took on a more yellow color than usual.

The municipal enterprise «Mykolaivvodokanal» commented on the deterioration of the quality of water in the citizens' taps only on March 15. They explained that the deterioration of water quality «is caused by natural and man-made factors», and also added that «there are no simple and quick solutions to such complex issues, but work in this direction continues».

It turned out that the state enterprise «Kryvbasshahtozakryttia», which is located upstream of the place of water intake for Mykolaiv, dumped water from its sumps into the river. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine granted him permission to do this until March 15, 2024, as evidenced by the relevant order «On the discharge of excess return water into the Ingulets River». In fact, we are talking about water that, after use with the help of technical facilities, enterprises return to rivers in the form of sewage, mine, quarry or drainage water.

However, the main condition of this permission from the Cabinet of Ministers is that the enterprise must comply with individual regulations. That is, the content of chlorides (salts, — note) in Ingulets should not exceed the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) of 350 milligrams per cubic decimeter (per liter, — note). For this purpose, mine waters must enter Ingulets together with fresh water, which would dilute them and reduce the percentage of mineralization. However, it turned out that this indicator was exceeded more than 4 times.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal reacted to the latest story of NikVesti about his scandalous decision to allow the discharge of mine waters to the state-owned enterprise «Kryvbasshahtozakryttia» into the river from which Mykolaiv receives its water. He held a meeting at which he «instructed to ensure the uninterrupted supply of technical water to Mykolaiv.»

And in April 2024, the government of Ukraine allocated 125.5 million hryvnias for the water supply of Mykolaiv.