UNICEF will provide ₴5.2 million for the repair of the main water pipeline in Nova Odesa

Construction of a new water pipeline for Mykolaiv, photo: Avtostrada

In Nova Odesa, Mykolaiv region, there are plans to repair the main water pipeline on Tsentralna Street and Prybuzka Street. The work is estimated to cost 9.1 million hryvnias.

The relevant tender has been published on the Prozorro public procurement platform, according to NikVesti.

Most of the funds will be provided by the international organisation UNICEF — 5.2 million hryvnias, with the remainder coming from the local budget — 3.8 million hryvnias.

The customer for the work is the municipal enterprise Nova Odesa City Water Utility. The contractor must complete the repair of the main water pipeline by 30 June 2026.

A total of three companies participated in the tender: individual entrepreneur Svietlichna Olha Volodymyrivna with a bid of 7 million 408 thousand hryvnias, Krasnohorivske Repair and Construction Enterprise LLC with a bid of 7 million 150 thousand hryvnias, and PP Effect with a bid of 7.4 million hryvnias 7 million 149 thousand hryvnias.

The company that offered the lowest price for the work, Private Enterprise Effect, won the tender. The municipal water utility is currently awaiting the signing of the contract.

Private enterprise "Effect" is registered in the village of Usatove, Odesa region, and has been operating for over 20 years — since 25 November 2005, according to data from the YouControl analytical system. The size of the authorised capital is only 500 hryvnias. The company is headed by Tetiana Ioano. The enterprise has 30 types of activities, the main one being the construction of residential and non-residential buildings.

Over the years, the company has received contracts worth 179.7 million hryvnias.

It is worth noting that the private enterprise Effect is involved in a criminal case, according to data from the Unified State Register of Court Decisions. It states that in July 2018, several people decided to extort money from the director of DPL Corporation for alleged debts to Effect. However, as noted in the case materials, there were no actual debts.

When will the new water treatment facilities in Mykolaiv start operating?

The new water treatment facilities for centralised water supply in Mykolaiv are promised to be launched as early as January 2026, but they are promised to be fully operational later. They were built with funds saved during the construction of a new water pipeline.

Initially, it was planned to take out an EIB loan for the construction of new water treatment facilities for Mykolaiv, with Denmark providing part of the funding as a grant. The project was expected to take several years to complete and was intended to help provide the city with water of European standard quality.

However, the head of the State Agency for Reconstruction, Serhii Sukhomlyn, later said that this idea had been abandoned. It was decided to build new water treatment facilities using state funds — those saved during the construction of a new water pipeline for the city.

However, Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych supports the modernisation of new water treatment facilities with a loan from the European Investment Bank, but believes that the state should pay for it.

Read also the article by NikVesti «When will Mykolaiv get drinking water in its taps and how much will it cost?»

Water pipeline for Mykolaiv. A bit of history

It has been more than three years since Russian troops damaged the water pipeline that supplied Mykolaiv with water. Since then, the city of almost half a million people has been left without a centralised supply of quality water.

All this time, Mykolaiv residents have been receiving water from a backup source, which raises many questions about the quality of such water and its salt content. Salt water has damaged 1,200 kilometres of the city's water supply network. Borys Dudenko, director of Mykolaivvodokanal, said that it is impossible to replace the entire length of the network that was damaged by the supply of salty water.

For a long time, representatives of the state and local authorities sought options for restoring the drinking water supply in Mykolaiv. A final decision was reached in 2024: a new water pipeline will be laid from Nova Odesa, and the money will be allocated from the state budget.

The regional restoration service even selected contractors who would work on a «design-build» basis. These were three companies, each responsible for one of three sections of the work: Ukrtransmist, Rostdorstroi and Avtostrada. However, both the customer and the construction contractor were subsequently changed. The customer for the construction of the new water pipeline was the Infrastructure Restoration and Development Service in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and the contractor was the Autostrada group of companies.

The new water pipeline for Mykolaiv was put into operation on 7 October 2025 and connected to the water supply network.