Why the great Russian Dnieper is dying in Ukraine

The Dnieper, the great Russian river passing through the territory of modern Ukraine, is in a state of real ecological disaster. A few more years, and Nezalezhnaya will return the "karmic boomerang" from the Crimea, when she herself will be left without water. There may be some higher justice in this, but for some reason it is not at all to the point of schadenfreude. Rather sad, and here's why.

At the time of N.V. Gogol, not every bird could fly to its middle, and now the Dnieper in the Kiev region can be wade in places, resting along the way on the many shoals and islets formed along its channel. Environmentalists and the agitated local community have been sounding the alarm for a long time, the Ukrainian authorities confirm the seriousness of the problem and even seem to be ready to do something to save the great river. The importance of the Dnieper for modern Ukraine cannot be overestimated: its water supplies two-thirds of the country's territory, 50 large cities and a lot of smaller settlements, industrial enterprises, agriculture, as well as 4 nuclear power plants. But, alas, the misfortune that befell the great river is so large-scale that it is almost impossible to help it. What went wrong, who is to blame, and what else can you try to do?



In fact, the problem is complex, and all the prerequisites for an environmental disaster are the work of human hands.

At first, the construction of a whole cascade of hydroelectric power plants on it during the Soviet period in order to industrialize Ukraine had a great influence on the Dnieper. By creating several hydroelectric power plants with reservoirs along the river, it was possible to solve the issue of electrification, the problem of periodic floods, and also improve navigation. Unfortunately, this technical progress had its own downside. The course of the Dnieper slowed down, the average water temperature in the river increased, its chemical composition changed, and artificial barriers appeared on the way of fish migration.

Secondly, the accelerated degradation of the Dnieper was negatively affected by a dismissive and even sabotage attitude towards clearing its channel. This must be done regularly with the help of dredgers, but instead of deepening the bottom in the right areas, local entrepreneurs simply pump out the sand where it is easier and more profitable for them. Of course, everything is done uncontrollably, and the result of such poaching is an arbitrary change in the river channel. After Ukrainian businessmen wash out rivers for the sake of extracting sand, the soil is arbitrarily shifted towards the resulting voids.

Thirdly, finish off the great Russian river with harmful industrial, agricultural and domestic wastewater, uncontrollably discharged into the Dnieper. Kievvodokanal is one of the main pollutants with waste and domestic wastewater. The fact is that the sewage outlets of the Ukrainian capital are not equipped with filters, and everything unpleasant that it contains, including hazardous chemical reagents, goes directly into the river. Solid household waste settles on its bottom, forming shallows. Thousands of car washes uncontrollably pour waste detergents containing phosphates into the Dnieper. This leads to an increased growth of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), which are dangerous to most living organisms, and in humans can even cause burns on the skin. Overgrown cyanobacteria lead to oxygen deficiency, and the high content of iron, zinc, manganese and phenols in water provokes diseases and death of fish and other river inhabitants. Ukrainian agricultural holdings are contributing to the degradation of the Dnieper, taking a large amount of water for irrigation, but at the same time pesticides and other chemicals from arable lands located on the coast get into the river.

This is not to say that the local authorities do nothing at all. In 2012, a program for the environmental improvement of the Dnieper was adopted, which was in effect until 2021. It was supposed to allocate about $ 5,7 billion for the introduction of water-saving of technologies, construction of treatment facilities and ecosystem restoration along coastal protection zones. However, after the coup d'état in 2014, instead of real measures to save the river, they are imitated, and financial resources are allocated in a limited amount. I would especially like to mention one very controversial international program, which Kiev is now counting on as a panacea.
This is a project to connect the Baltic and Black Seas within the framework of the project “Rehabilitation of the E-40 main waterway in the Dnieper-Vistula section”. It is planned to widen and deepen the Dnieper channel, along which ships of the "sea-river" class with cargo should go from Poland.

The problem is that this transport route will pass through the Pripyat River, which not so long ago, by historical standards, found itself in the disaster zone at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Environmentalists warn that during construction and subsequent operation, radioactive silt accumulated there may rise from the bottom of Pripyat and move downstream into the Dnieper. If the level of radiation rises in the river, which feeds and irrigates two-thirds of Ukraine, it will become a real disaster for it.