Two days after the explosion which caused the partial destruction of the Nova Kakhkova dam, the extent of the ecological disaster to come remains difficult to measure. The two belligerents blame each other for the disaster: Ukraine denounced “ecocide”, Prime Minister Denys Chmyhal accusing Russia on Wednesday of having caused “one of the worst environmental disasters in recent decades”. Putin retorted at the end of the afternoon that this “barbaric act” constituted “a large-scale environmental and humanitarian disaster”, returning the responsibility to Ukraine for a crime which, a priori, would benefit Russia more militarily.
The volume of water that the dam held back alone gives a good idea of the extent of the damage that its destruction will cause. The Kakhovka reservoir contained nearly 18 billion tons of water, over a distance of about 240 kilometers long and 23 kilometers wide. Satellite images released overnight Tuesday already showed massive flooding downstream. On the ground, videos by the hundreds, published by civilians on social networks, revealed floods of waste, sediment, pieces of dwellings, or dead animals carried by the rising waters. In Nova Kakhovka, the zoo was totally flooded, according to an animal protection association which mentioned the death of all the animals except the swans.
According to the Ukrainian government, 150 tonnes of machine oil spilled into the river, and another 300 tonnes could leak again. “There is a smell of motor oil,” Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko testified on Tuesday in a video posted on Twitter.
In preliminary conclusions, the Ukrainian NGO Ecoaction fears direct pollution of the river by the dumping of “garbage, agrochemicals and other hazardous materials, as well as the flooding and disabling of wastewater treatment systems”. Associate researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research, Franck Galland agrees. “Like the flooding of the Seine in 1910, or that of 2002 in Prague, the chemical and pyrotechnic pollution of the soil will be disastrous for decades”. The specialist evokes the rejection of sewers, fuel tanks, garage drains, “and even, this time, antipersonnel mines which are likely to travel, carried by the river”. In addition to soil pollution, there is that of groundwater. “They interact with the Dnieper, and there may potentially be upwellings in very distant territories,” worries the researcher.
The drainage also threatens to disrupt ecosystems from Ukraine’s largest river to the Black Sea coastal areas. Ecoaction thus fears the potential pollution of several national natural parks, refuges for dozens of protected species, including the Black Sea biosphere reserve classified by Unesco. The Dnieper delta is also home to wetlands protected by the international Ramsar convention. Land of sands and swamps, the steppes of Oleshky Park will also be completely remodeled. “We are witnessing an ecological disaster which also affects the coastal countries of the Black Sea, close to the delta”, adds Franck Galland.
In addition, the drop in the water level upstream leads to “a high risk of water shortage in the most affected regions”, warns the Ukrainian NGO. Built during the Soviet era in the 1950s, the water reservoir retained by the Kakhovka dam makes it possible to irrigate the southern part of Ukraine, one of the driest in the country. Several hundred thousand hectares of agricultural land could thus have to be deprived of irrigation.
In addition to the risk of drying out, the decrease in the water level also risks “deteriorating the quality of the water due to the decomposition of dead organisms”, fears Ecoaction. The destruction of the dam therefore constitutes a major risk for access to water for millions of people.
“Destroying such a work essential to the life of the populations is clearly an ecocide”, assesses Franck Galland. Such structures are highly protected by international humanitarian law: “Installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear power plants, shall not be attacked,” states the Geneva Convention. Added to this is the risk of a humanitarian disaster, which could further weaken the Ukrainian economy, a country among the world’s main suppliers of cereals.
