MALOKATERNIVKA From the yard of Olga Deribas, you can see a meadow that stretches to the horizon. You’d think it’s always looked like this here, but it hasn’t.
In the spring, there was a huge lake here, the Kahovka reservoir. The lake was twice as big as Päijänne.
68-year-old Olga looks at the landscape suspiciously. He grew up by the lake. The Kahovka dam was built 70 years ago.
– The climate changed when the lake disappeared. There used to be moisture in the air. It’s drier and hotter now. Even the wind disappeared.
According to Deribas, the water disappeared in a few days. The grass soon began to grow because the bottom of the lake was rich in nutrients and moist.
It is more than ten kilometers from the village of Malokaterinivka to the opposite shore. The village is located on the east bank of the Dnipro, southeast of the city of Zaporizhia.
to the Kahovka dam, which destroyed by the Russians the sixth day of June, is about two hundred kilometers along the lake.
The artificial lake was one of the largest in Europe. Therefore, it is difficult to grasp the extent of the disaster.
In the upper reaches, the water disappeared from the artificial lake, in the lower reaches, the water covered vast lowlands.
The village of Malokaterinivka had, for example, professional fishermen and a fish farm. These livelihoods were washed away with the escaping water. The same has happened to many farmers.
– Without water there is no life. That was the end of everything, says Olga.
Many left when the water disappeared.
The biggest disadvantage for the locals was the loss of domestic water. For example, all irrigation water was taken from the lake.
Farmers and local residents are in trouble. All have their own gardens where they grow vegetables for the winter.
Olga takes us to the shore of the lost lake. The pipe that took water from the lake is a couple of meters above the ground. There is no water for miles.
– We can’t farm because of the lack of water. Everyone grew vegetables in their gardens. I don’t know how we’ll survive now.
The UN estimates that 350,000 to 550,000 hectares of farmland will be affected by the disaster. In the upper reaches, the fields do not receive irrigation water, in the lower reaches, the fields remained under water.
Up to 700,000 people lack drinking water
Malokaterinivka municipal hall Svitlana Bondarinka has his hands full with work. People need help, water and livelihood.
The village’s drinking water comes through pipes, but there is also a dire shortage of that.
Drinking water from Zaporizhia is also used for other purposes than drinking and cooking, therefore there is not enough water for the village of Malokaterinivka.
The UN estimates that up to 700,000 people’s access to drinking water suffered after Russia blew up the dam.
The most immediate problem in Malokaterinivka is still the lack of domestic water.
– This was an oasis, people had flowers in their yards. Now everything dries up and farming is not possible.
According to Bondarinka, the only option for obtaining water is to build a well. It’s not easy to do either.
– The wells should be really deep so that they give water for a longer period of time. Nobody here can afford that, says Svitlana Bondarinka, who works at the municipal hall.
Ship traffic ended with the disaster
On the opposite bank of the Kahovka artificial lake, on the southern edge of the city of Zaporizhia, the townspeople sit fishing.
The Dnipro riverbed runs here. There is little water left.
The water level has still dropped from six to closer to ten meters. For example, the factory pier is high in the air.
Large boats lie on the river bed meters away from the river.
– Here, where I’m sitting, it was closer to ten meters deep, he says Ruslan.
He is bitter because, according to him, a huge number of fish were destroyed.
– The fish had laid their eggs on those banks. Everything was destroyed when the water escaped.
Even the experts are puzzled by the destruction
The environmental damage is enormous, and it is still too early to assess all the possible effects. Nothing similar has happened in today’s world.
– We cannot go to the territories occupied by Russia to investigate. There are many areas that suffer from a lack of both drinking and irrigation water, he says Anton PetrukhinZaporizhia region environmental management expert.
Petrukhin estimates that around 60 percent of the farmland in the area of the Kahovka reservoir has been left without irrigation water this year. It has affected food production in southern Ukraine.
Nature has also suffered in many ways. Downstream, many species remained under the water masses. In the upper reaches, the aquatic animals remained on dry land instead.
Petrukhin estimates that it will take tens of years for nature to recover.
This is natural death, the so-called ecocide
According to him, it is so-called natural death, ecocide in English. It means large-scale, deliberate destruction of nature.
– There is no doubt about it, because the aggressor state was able to estimate what kind of damage blowing up the dam would cause. In other words, this was a planned crime. Enormous areas of land have been ruined. Both surface and groundwater have been polluted. The list of destruction is long.
The economic effects are also great. The UN estimates that the damages will rise to 14 billion euros. Reconstruction would require close to two billion in the short term, assessed the UN in its survey.
The Kahovka dam cannot be repaired because Russian troops are occupying the areas south of the dam. It is practically the front line of the war.
When Russia blew up the dam at the beginning of June, the water rose closer to six meters in the city of Kherson.
reported from the scene how civilians were evacuated and how parts of the city of Kherson had to be traveled by boat.