EU to provide €30 million to Kryvyi Rih to restore water supply after Kakhovka HPP explosion

The European Union will finance a €30 million project to reconstruct the water supply system in Kryvyi Rih. The initiative was announced on the second anniversary of the Kakhovka dam explosion.

According to the press service of the EU delegation to Ukraine, the project will be implemented by the International Organization for Migration.

Before the dam was blown up, the city received water from the Kakhovka Reservoir, but after its destruction, Kryvyi Rih has to rely on worn-out and inefficient alternative sources.

The aim of the project is to improve the quality of water supply, reduce energy consumption and water losses in the city network. It is planned to repair pumping stations, replace pipelines and upgrade water treatment infrastructure. Kryvyi Rih Vodokanal and local authorities will join the work.

In two years, the upgraded system is expected to provide a stable water supply for about 700,000 residents, including about 80,000 internally displaced people.

Water supply for Mykolaiv

More than three years have passed since Russian troops damaged the water pipeline supplying Mykolaiv. Since then, the city of almost half a million people has been without a centralised supply of quality water. Currently, Mykolaiv residents receive water from a backup source, which raises many questions about the quality of this water and the salt content in it. The salt water damaged 1,200 kilometres of the city's water supply network. Boris Dudenko, director of «Mykolaivvodokanal», said that it is impossible to replace the entire length of the network that was damaged by salt water. As of August 2024, only about 3 kilometres of the network had been replaced.

All this time, representatives of state and local authorities were looking for ways to restore drinking water supply in Mykolaiv. The final solution was found in 2024: a new water supply line would be laid from Nova Odesa, and the money was allocated from the state budget.

The regional recovery service even selected contractors who will work according to the principle of «design-build». They are three companies, each of which is responsible for one of the three work areas: «Ukrtransmist», «Rostdorstroi» and «Autostrada». However, later both the client and the construction contractor were changed. The customer for the construction of the new water pipeline was the Service for Infrastructure Restoration and Development in Dnipropetrovska oblast, and the contractor was the group of companies «Avtostrada».

The future water pipeline for Mykolaiv is expected to be built and launched by autumn 2025, said Serhiy Sukhomlyn, head of the State Agency for Reconstruction. Back during a conference in Berlin in 2024, First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Korniienko, answering a question from NikVesti, said that the lack of drinking water in Mykolaiv was one of the biggest problems in Ukraine that the state should solve in the near future. And President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ordered the construction of a new water supply system to provide Mykolaiv with drinking water «under the fast track option» — drinking water should be available by the summer of 2025. The government has already approved the programme.

Solar power plants are going to be installed on the water supply system for Mykolaiv, which will reduce the cost of water tariffs for the city's residents, said Vitalii Kim, head of the RMA. At the same time, the contractor «Autostrada» explained that they decided to lay a new water supply system for Mykolaiv from Nova Odesa, as it is the «closest site with good quality drinking water». They also showed photos of the construction of the new water supply system.

Maksym Shkil, founder of the company «Autostrada», spoke about the ongoing construction of the water supply system for Mykolaiv. So far, almost 120 kilometres of pipes have been laid, which is more than 90% of the total length of the water supply system.