Crimea without fresh water

SEVASTOPIL-SYMFEROPIL — I carried out an experiment. Walking down Velyka Morska St. in Sevastopil, I stopped 10 city residents and asked them the same question: “What caused the city water supply system to become polluted?” Only one person quoted the official version: “blue-green seaweed.” Two people said it was negligence on the part of water supply personnel; three individuals suggested that “they’re experimenting on us”; and four said it was “an act of sabotage” and “technology for poisoning a city was being tested.”

In other words, nine out of ten citizens did not believe the official explanation, and seven out of nine assumed it was a deliberate act of sabotage against their city. This assumption did not just come out of the blue.

Residents in the Crimea were alarmed by two news agency reports that sounded very odd in our peacetime conditions. The first was from the emergency management ministry, to the effect that residents of a village had spotted a stranger in a black jeep driving to a drinking well and pouring some powder into it.

The second one was that the poisoning of water in the city pipelines was “an act of sabotage against the Black Sea Fleet” and that “the Russian special services have received information about a series of acts of terrorism being prepared by militants, targeting the waterworks in various regions in the southern part of the country.” Although the following morning Russia’s Black Sea Fleet disproved the story about acts of terrorism, and later Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense announced that “no acts of terrorism have taken place in the city,” alarming rumors continued to spread. Some people claimed to have found dead crows next to a watering place, while others said that their pets had died after drinking water in the morning. Some people reported that rocket fuel had been dumped into the water reservoir.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

I will reconstruct the chronology of events. The press service of the Sevastopil state administration announced that on the evening of Nov. 8, precisely at 10:05 p.m., the night shifts of city services began receiving calls from residents of Balaklava, Gagarin, and Lenin city districts, who complained that their tap water had an unpleasant smell. The water supply was not immediately turned off. In some districts the taps ran dry in the morning, while in others water was still running even at 9 a.m. on Nov. 9, so people had enough time to wash and even cook lunch.

Sevmiskvodokanal lab experts promptly took samples from water reservoirs and hydro-systems. Some of them (nos. 2, 3, 6, 7, and 14) showed that the water met all state standards, but its color was light brown, and it had a pungent, unpleasant smell.

Serhii Kunitsyn, the head of the City State Administration, held a briefing to announce that the authorities had the situation under control. “It has stabilized and it will take the municipal authorities a day or two to close the matter,” he stated. At the same time, he confirmed again that the authorities still did not know anything about the source of the water pollution. By now the residents of the city had calmed down, largely because the medical services announced that there were no cases of poisoning.

Meanwhile, a commission was developing an emergency fresh water supply algorithm. Kunitsyn announced that district operations headquarters had been created, motor vehicles cleared for fresh water transportation were available, places of their deployment had been mapped out, and a water supply schedule for microdistricts were drawn up in case of force majeure circumstances. Instructions were issued for inspecting artesian wells. It turned out that only 47 of 130 wells were functioning. A mobile laboratory for testing water toxicity arrived in Sevastopil.

The military also offered help. The Ukrainian Navy supplied the city with seven water transportation vehicles capable of providing 41 m? at a time, over 100 rubber reservoirs for 34,000 liters, and the Sudak water tanker filled with 800 tons of water.

“Serious conclusions will be drawn from this situation,” reports the city state administration’s press service. “All measures have been taken in order to prevent a repeat situation.” The deputy head of the city state administration in charge of housing and communal services was told to draw up a comprehensive plan of upgrades and repairs at sewage disposal plants and sewer systems in Sevastopil and the rural zone. “This work will not be completed in one day, not even in one year. It will require serious financing, about a billion hryvnias that the city budget doesn’t have. But the work must be started immediately,” Kunitsyn said.

NO ONE BELIEVES THE BLUE-GREEN STORY

The city’s water supply was restored the following morning. The unpleasant smell was not as pronounced, but it was still there. The local radio kept announcing that water was being supplied only for technical needs, although it was meeting state standards, except for the unpleasant smell.

The results of the tests were supposed to be ready in four days. But long after the deadline all that the city kept hearing was rumors. In an interview with Sevastopil television, Roman Proskurnin, the head of the city’s sanitation and epidemiology station’s sanitation and hygiene division, told residents that “according to our laboratory tests to check the water for toxicity using biological substrate and lab animals, there are no deviations from normal levels.” Later, the residents of Sevastopil were told that the water pollution was caused by cyanobacteria (popularly known as blue-green seaweed) that appeared to have multiplied in mind-boggling numbers in the city’s water reservoirs, which then reacted with the chlorine used in water treatment, triggering off a reaction that resulted in the unpleasant smell and color.

Even when normal water started running from the taps, no one believed these official announcements because they all carefully skirted the topic of pollution in the gathering pond on the Baidarka River. Scientists at the Sevastopol Institute of Southern Seas Biology, several departments of which have been dealing with the cyanobacteria problem for a long time, challenged the official announcements. Senior research fellow Mykola Shchadrin told journalists that the active development of this seaweed is possible only during the hot months, for example when water starts “blooming,” but never in November.

Why have no cases been recorded earlier? This year’s weather conditions were no different from previous years. Another question is why water pollution occurred after the rains that were supposed to add fresh water to the reservoirs and “dilute” the seaweed? Another suspicious aspect is that no experts from the institute were involved in the investigation, and no one can approach the water reservoirs, which are a restricted area.

Meanwhile, no one dares openly argue with the authorities. It is true that there were heavy rains in Sevastopil on Nov. 7 and 8. The gathering pond on the Baidarka could be the source of pollution, but then the question is what those heavy rains washed out of it. The Day received information from an anonymous source in the city state administration. There are a number of suspect facilities — farms, warehouses, and fields — around the water reservoir that could well have discharged pollutants.

The residents of Sevastopil were lucky because, no matter what the pollutant, it was not poisonous enough to cause deaths and diseases. But what if it happens again? People in Sevastopil say that there are no guarantees of safety and no one to provide them. Fresh water sources near large cities all over Ukraine are easily accessible to malefactors.

THE RIGHT TO WATER

A recent article in The Day, “Man’s right to water,” states that access to fresh water is a basic human right, which is not upheld in many cases. So the topic of water pollution in Sevastopil cannot be considered exhausted. During a computer-aided conference two weeks ago, Kunitsyn reported that he is in touch with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Rybak to whom he reported on the situation. Arrangements were made to assist Sevastopil to deal with the consequences of the emergency.

The prime minister promised to provide funds to upgrade the city’s water supply and treatment systems. “We are preparing documents to obtain a sum from the cabinet’s reserve fund to overcome these consequences,” Kunitsyn said, adding, “Obviously, we must figure out the situation with that gathering pond.” He emphasized certain shortcomings in the organization of public information and adoption of organizational measures.

Other water reservoirs that supply large Crimean cities have the same shortcomings. The Crimean government recently declared that the sewer systems are rapidly deteriorating, while local utilities are reluctant to implement central budget appropriations. The newspaper Krymski visti (Crimean News) writes that barely one-half of these appropriations will be realized by the end of the year.

Ukraine’s budget for 2006 envisages 35.2 million hryvnias for repairs of waterworks and drainage systems, but by Oct. 1 the waterworks had received only 15.5 million, of which merely 1,065,000 hryvnias, or 10.6 percent, have been issued. Housing and communal services in the Crimea were supposed to receive 5.8 million hryvnias, but actually received only 2.1 million. Of this amount, only 1.2 million, slightly more than 50 percent, reached the Crimeans.

“If these appropriations are not implemented this year, the local councils will have to return them to the central budget, and in 2007 they can only expect appropriations that do not exceed those of 2006,” says Olha Sorokina, head of the Housing and Utilities Ministry’s department for the development of water supply and sewer systems, rural water supplies, and labor protection. She says, for example, that the sewer and sewage disposal systems in the village of Poshtove, Bakhchisarai raion, have been in critical state for many years. This year, in response to local authorities’ requests, 730,000 hryvnias were allocated from the central budget, but this money remains unimplemented for the banal reason that there are no design estimates.

Out of 956 Crimean villages only 546 have centralized water supply. Water is transported to 33 populated areas inhabited by 19,000 people. In many populated areas, especially in the resort zone, there is no round-the- clock water supply. Officials in charge of utilities say that at one time the authorities of the Lenin district took pity on residents and did not collect water bills or raise fees after collective and state farms stopped paying for water. As a result, the water pipes rusted through and the water supply system is out of service. Local residents have to make do with water brought by truck, paying one hryvnia a bucketful and suffering many other inconveniences.

In January 2006 the Crimea’s Council of Ministers negotiated foreign investments for the construction of a modern water-purifying plant near Symferopil. It was predicted that about 50 million US dollars would be spent, but then the autonomy’s government was replaced, and the situation has not changed, although construction was supposed to be launched this year.

Another serious problem is that practically all Crimean rivers in the vicinity of Sevastopil and throughout the peninsula are degrading. According to hydrogeologists, there are 1,657 small, medium-sized, and large rivers with a total length of 5,996 km, as well as more than 1,500 water reservoirs and 23 man-made lakes. All these sources of fresh water in the Crimea are overgrown with weeds and packed with garbage that has not been removed for years.

Mykola Zavolodko, first deputy chairman of the Republican Committee for Waterworks Construction and Irrigated Farming, told journalists that the Crimean water reservoirs have not been cleaned since Soviet times. Unofficially the reason is lack of funds. Work on 1 km of river costs some 63,000 hryvnias, and between 300 and 400 km have to be cleaned. In other words, the Crimea needs approximately 20 million hryvnias, not counting the cost of reinforcing and upgrading dams and other works. All told, solving the problem of Crimean rivers and water reservoirs will cost some 200 million hryvnias.

To prevent pollution, or at least reduce it, protection zones must be designated on the banks of every body of water, along with water protection territories. It is possible to enforce a rigid sanitary regime and to ban all construction and other economic activities around every body of water. However, according to the estimates of the Krymdiprovodhosp Institute, designing and building such protection belts will cost 45.3 million hryvnias. The Republican Water Management Committee is trying to solve this problem by using the resources of water management organizations. Crimean hydrogeological experts insist that if this problem is ignored, the riverbeds will stop letting water through and it will seek new routes, flooding adjacent territories.