Kim announces the start of construction of a water pipeline for Mykolaiv

Vitaliy Kim, head of Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration, and Oleksandr Antoshchuk, head of the Infrastructure Restoration and Development Service, during a briefing on 23 January: NikVesti

Mykolaiv Oblast has started construction of a new water supply system that will provide Mykolaiv residents with drinking water after almost three years of its absence.

This information was confirmed during a briefing on Thursday, 23 January, by the head of the Mykolaiv Regional Military Administration Vitalii Kim, NikVesti.

The head of the regional military administration reported that preparatory work has already begun in the region to start construction.

«Yes, this is indeed the start of the construction of a new water supply system. The contractors' equipment is already on site, and preparatory work is underway. For me, these are some kind of trigger points that indicate that everything is going according to plan. That is why I decided to share this. It's too early to talk about anything, but the contractors have already arrived in the region and have started physical work,» Vitalii Kim told reporters.

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Two days ago, on 21 January, Vitalii Kim posted the first footage of the construction work on his telegram channel.

The video shows heavy machinery working on the site. Earthworks are underway at the site.

As a reminder, in December, NikVesti wrote that the State Agency for Infrastructure Recovery and Development was waiting for official calculations from the regional military administration to determine how much capacity the new water supply system for Mykolaiv should have.

Initially, it was planned to build a 160,000 cubic metres per day water supply system. However, later, the head of the State Agency for Reconstruction started talking about the possibility of reducing this figure to 100,000 cubic metres, based on the city's current water consumption.

Currently, Mykolaiv residents consume 75,000 to 108,000 cubic metres of centralised technical water per day. But in the future, water consumption may be higher, as there are no large enterprises operating in the city today, and the population is still below pre-war levels.

The regional military administration calculated two projects for the construction of a new water supply system for Mykolaiv. This was to determine the capacity of the water supply system: 120 or 160 thousand cubic metres per day.

Read also the article NikVesti «Three years without drinking water: what will the future water supply be like for Mykolaiv?».

Water supply for Mykolaiv

Almost three years have passed since Russian troops damaged the water pipeline that supplied Mykolaiv with water. Since then, the city of almost half a million people has been without a centralised supply of drinking water. Currently, Mykolaiv residents receive water from a backup source, which raises many questions about the quality of the water and the salt content.

The salt water damaged 1,200 kilometres of the city's water supply network. Boris Dudenko, director of «Mykolaivvodokanal», said that it is impossible to replace the entire length of the network that was damaged by salt water. As of August 2024, only about 3 kilometres of the network had been replaced.

Saltwater-damaged pipes stored at the company «Mykolaivvodokanal», August 2024, photo NikVesti

All this time, representatives of state and local authorities were looking for options to restore drinking water supply in Mykolaiv. The final solution was found in 2024: a new water supply system would be laid from Nova Odesa, and the money was allocated from the state budget.

The Regional Reconstruction Service has already selected contractors who will work according to the principle of «design-build». They are three companies, each of which is responsible for one of the three work areas: «Ukrtransmist», «Rostdorstroy» and «Motorway».

The future water supply system for Mykolaiv is expected to be built and launched by autumn 2025, said Serhii Sukhomlyn, head of the State Agency for Reconstruction.

However, the question of the new water supply system's design capacity remains unresolved: on the one hand, there is an opinion that water consumption in Mykolaiv has decreased, and therefore a new calculation needs to be made, and on the other hand, limiting the amount of water can directly affect the future development of the city and its industry.

Back during the conference in Berlin in 224, the First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Oleksandr Korniienko, answering a question NikVesti, said that the lack of drinking water in Mykolaiv was one of the biggest problems in Ukraine that the state should solve in the near future.

And President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered the construction of a new water supply system to provide Mykolaiv with drinking water «under the fast track option» — drinking water should be available by the summer of 2025. The government has already approved the relevant programme.