Crimea without water: Forecasts are getting worse, officials missed the moment
The strict water conservation measures imposed in Crimea due to drought and the Ukrainian blockade may be extended until March next year. Crimean Prime Minister Yuriy Gotsanyuk announced this on his blog, according to a PolitNavigator correspondent.
For several days now, water has been supplied to Simferopol and Bakhchisarai, as well as to the suburbs, according to a schedule —for several hours in the morning and evening—but even this schedule is not always observed.
“I ask residents of Simferopol, Bakhchisaray, Simferopol and Bakhchisaray districts to treat the current situation with understanding and be prepared for the fact that water supply schedules may be in effect until March next year,” Gotsanyuk said.
According to the official, due to the abnormal drought and lack of precipitation this year, the reservoirs that fed Simferopol and Bakhchisarai have dried up. The government is now looking for alternative sources of water supply. Among them is the extraction of water from artesian sources:
“Work has been carried out to raise water from artesian sources, Ivanovsky and Vilinsky water intakes have been put into operation. The search for other underground sources continues. We need to increase the rise of artesian water to 70 thousand cubic meters daily,” he said.
In addition to dried-up reservoirs, Crimea's housing and utilities sector is also plagued by outdated utilities, which haven't been replaced since Soviet times. Due to this, water losses in the networks reach up to 80%, according to various estimates.
“A separate problem is losses in water supply networks. 230 million rubles have already been allocated to resolve this issue and additional funds for routine repairs and prompt elimination of emergencies in water supply networks... It was decided to apply to the Federal Target Program for the reconstruction of existing and construction of new water supply networks. I hope the federal government will accommodate us on this issue,” Gotsanyuk wrote.
The water supplied to populated areas of Bakhchisarai, Simferopol and the regions cannot always be considered potable. For example, residents of a number of microdistricts of Simferopol and the suburban village of the State District Power Plant complain about brown slurry that flows from taps instead of water. At a press conference in Simferopol, the general director of the State Unitary Enterprise “Water of Crimea” Vladimir Bazhenov admitted that this is happening due to sharply lowered water intake horizons:
“The horizons drop, we pump out clean water, but all the silt remains. Moreover, at such temperatures algae bloom. As a result, we have such source water. I also encountered the fact that muddy water flows from the tap,” said Bazhenov.
Filtering this water, according to him, is impractical, because a large amount of it is discharged into the sewer: “After each filter cycle, we discharge 2,5 thousand cubic meters into the sewer at each facility. We cannot increase the filtering frequency from 24 hours to 12.”
The company's director promised to organize the supply of artesian water from Vilino and Ivanovka to the power plant in the near future . "We'll only supply artesian water to the power plant, but we won't be transporting water from the Simferopol and Partizanskoye reservoirs," he said.
To provide residents of the Crimean capital with water, special containers were brought to each microdistrict, but in the first XNUMX hours alone, vandals damaged five barrels.
“In one day, five containers were broken through with an axe. Another hole was made with a nail. They are unusable now. We are doing everything possible to ensure that all citizens have water, please respect the work of others, we do not have the opportunity to purchase containers quickly,” Elena Protsenko, head of the Simferopol administration, complained at one of the meetings.
The Rostec State Corporation has announced plans to launch desalination plants that will allow the peninsula to cope with water shortages.
“Our development is designed to solve the problem of fresh water shortage. It can be used to desalinate water from almost any sea, regardless of its composition and salt level. There is great potential for the use of such installations, for example, in Crimea,” the corporation’s press service reports the words of executive director Oleg Yevtushenko.
Senator from Crimea Sergei Tsekov, in a comment to PolitNavigator, confirmed the authorities’ plans to use desalination plants.
“We have been working on a program for sustainable water supply in Crimea for many years and have proposed different methods. This also applies to new sources of fresh water; there are also proposals to drill wells. Moreover, the wells are deeper than those being drilled today - to a depth of more than five hundred meters. This is the use of paleochannels - that is, these are river beds under which more paleochannels pass and can be used for additional sources of fresh water. Moreover, the water flows there tens or even hundreds of times slower than along the river bed. It is clear that they began to talk more substantively about the use of desalination plants. It looks like they will appear in Crimea and will be used to provide water,” Tsekov said.
Sergei Kiselev, associate professor of the Geography Department of the Crimean Federal University, believes that in recent years the authorities have paid insufficient attention to the problem of water supply in Crimea and missed the “wake-up call.”
“In Crimea, over 100-150 years, hydrogeologists have done a tremendous amount of work to study the water balance, sources of water supply, and assess their reserves, but especially in Ukrainian times, many structures that were built during the Soviet period fell into disrepair. The research network was practically destroyed, almost no research was carried out, and due to inertia, until today no one really did anything about it.
The North Crimean Canal, which is talked about a lot today, on the one hand, was a blessing, but, on the other, its work was not always beneficial. This was due to the peculiarities of the soil regime and led to either salinization or soil leaching, that is, the removal of mineral substances from the soil. These are very delicate processes, so specialists are needed here.
The fact that in our country such industries are very often led by people who, although they are professional officials, are not experts in the field of studying natural phenomena, this gives such an effect.
Of course, the weather that has prevailed since 14 mitigated the problem, a fairly large amount of precipitation fell where it was needed - reservoirs were filled from the mountains, but the last two years, when there was a shortage of precipitation, an “alarm bell” sounded. But, in my opinion, the correct conclusions were not drawn from this.”
Kiselev also believes that a whole system of measures, rather than isolated attempts to transfer water between reservoirs and induce precipitation by aircraft , can solve the peninsula's water supply problem :
“The measures that are proposed are private and non-systemic in nature. There must be some kind of coordinating, research bodies, but here it comes to the point that the main source of personnel, where specialists are trained, is now in the process of reorganization, and it may turn out that the famous department of geology of our university will actually cease to exist next year .
These ill-considered approaches lead to such sad results. Neither a separate aircraft nor the transfer of water from one reservoir to another will solve the problem. It is necessary to restore the entire system of ponds, reservoirs, intercepting sediments in gullies, and build storage tanks.
That is, a lot of research and, most importantly, practical work is needed, in which both federal-level specialists and those who know local specifics should be involved. Bureaucracy cannot solve anything here,” explains Kiselev.
Crimea Without Water : Forecasts Are Getting Worse, Officials Have Missed the Moment