Zelenskyy was informed about the decision to «accelerate the start of construction» of the water pipeline for Mykolaiv from Nova Odesa

Photo: Office of the President

The President's Office announced the decision to «accelerate the start of construction» of the water pipeline from New Odesa to provide Mykolaiv with fresh water.

 This decision was made during the coordination meeting on the provision of water to the territorial communities of the Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv regions, which was held by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Office of the President reported. However, they did not specify who exactly made this decision.

Photo: Office of the President

Judging by the screenshot of the online meeting, the meeting was attended by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Head of the Office of the President Andrii Yermak, Minister of Finance of Ukraine Serhii Marchenko, Deputy Prime Minister-Minister of Economy Yuliia Svyrydenko, Head of Mykolayiv RMA Vitalii Kim, representatives Yurii Vlasenko, head of the Kharkiv RMA, head of the National Commission for State Regulation in the Energy and Utilities Sectors (NKREKP).

«At the meeting, a decision was made to speed up the start of the construction of the water pipeline from Nova Odesa to Mykolaiv in order to provide water to the Mykolaiv Oblast,» says the OP's message.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy was informed about the situation with the construction of water mains after the explosion of the Kakhovka HPP. Currently, all lines of the main water pipelines have already been launched in the sections of the Ingulets River — the Southern Reservoir, Marganets — Nikopol — Pokrov, Zaporizhzhia — Tomakivka — Marganets.

The implementation of these projects will provide water to 1.5 million Ukrainians — residents of Nikopol, Marganets, Pokrov, Apostolove, and Zelenodolsk.

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«It is very important that people now get water. Thank you for the joint work that produced the necessary result,» said Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In order to prevent an increase in water tariffs for residents, the OP informed, they decided to allocate funds from the state budget to support water supply enterprises of Nikopol, Marganets, Pokrov, Kryvyi Rih, Apostolovy and Zelenodolsk.

«People in such cities as Marganets and Nikopol in the Kryvorizkyi district suffered because of the war. They had no water. Therefore, it is necessary to find the right special approach, to support people,» said Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

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 deteriorated — it became saltier and took on a more yellow color than usual.

The municipal enterprise «Mykolaivvodokanal» commented on the deterioration of water quality in the taps of citizens 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.