«They are proceeding according to schedule»: water utility says that the new treatment facilities for Mykolaiv will be fully operational in March

Construction of water treatment facilities for Mykolaiv, photo by NikVesti

The new water treatment facilities for Mykolaiv are expected to be fully operational in two months, in March 2026.

This was announced by Vasyl Telpis, acting director of the municipal enterprise Mykolaivvodokanal, during a staff meeting today, 12 January, according to a NikVesti correspondent.

He noted that this is what the contractor company Avtostrada, which is currently engaged in their construction, is saying.

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«They are on schedule, working 24/7. Therefore, they say that they will finish in March. It will be launched in March,» said Vasyl Telpis.

Read also the article NikVesti «When will Mykolaiv get drinking water in its taps and how much will it cost?»

In particular, it says that the launch of new water treatment facilities for centralized water supply in Mykolaiv is promised as early as January 2026, but they promise to launch them fully later. They were built with funds saved during the construction of a new water pipeline.

Initially, it was planned to take out an EIB loan for the construction of new water treatment facilities for Mykolaiv, with Denmark providing part of the funding as a grant. The project was expected to take several years to complete and was intended to help provide the city with water of European standards.

However, the head of the State Agency for Reconstruction, Serhii Sukhomlyn, later said that this idea had been abandoned. It was decided to build new water treatment facilities using state funds — those saved during the construction of a new water pipeline for the city.

However, Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych supports the modernisation of new water treatment facilities with a loan from the European Investment Bank, but believes that the state should pay for it.

Water pipeline for Mykolaiv. A bit of history

It has been more than three years since Russian troops damaged the water pipeline that supplied Mykolaiv with water. Since then, the city of almost half a million people has been left without a centralised supply of quality water.

All this time, Mykolaiv residents have been receiving water from a backup source, which raises many questions about the quality of such water and its salt content. Salt water has damaged 1,200 kilometres of the city's water supply network. Borys Dudenko, director of Mykolaivvodokanal, said that it is impossible to replace the entire length of the network that was damaged by the supply of salty water.

For a long time, representatives of the state and local authorities sought options for restoring the drinking water supply in Mykolaiv. A final decision was reached in 2024: a new water pipeline will be laid from Nova Odesa, and the money will be allocated from the state budget.

The regional restoration service even selected contractors who would work on a «design-build» basis. These were three companies, each responsible for one of three sections of the work: Ukrtransmist, Rostdorstroi and Avtostrada. However, both the customer and the construction contractor were subsequently changed. The customer for the construction of the new water pipeline was the Infrastructure Restoration and Development Service in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and the contractor was the Autostrada group of companies.

The new water pipeline for Mykolaiv was put into operation on 7 October 2025, when it was connected to the water supply network.