Mykolaiv residents will not get perfect water immediately after launch of new water supply system

Serhii Sukhomlyn and Vitalii Kim at an offsite meeting at the water pipeline construction site. Photo: Mykolaiv Regional Water Company

After the launch of the new water supply system in Mykolaiv, the water in the taps will not be immediately «perfectly» clean — it will take several weeks.

This was announced by the head of the State Agency for Infrastructure Recovery and Development, Serhii Sukhomlyn, explaining that the system will need to be «driven» and cleaned.

As you know, it is promised to lay a new water supply system to Mykolaiv and take water from the Southern Bug near Nova Odesa by July 2025.

«We did several analyses — the water quality is very good, much better than even the previous intake point in Mykolaiv. There is no salt. Sometimes, in some months, such as October, there is a little more manganese, but we are planning measures to remove it. So that Mykolaiv residents don't have to tune in to the fact that on 1 August, for example, they will open the water supply — the perfect water will come immediately. Even if everything goes according to plan and we build a treatment plant, it will take some time, 2-3 weeks, to clean the entire system,» he explained.

Water supply for Mykolaiv

Almost three years have passed since Russian troops damaged the water pipeline that supplied Mykolaiv with water. Since then, the city of almost half a million people has been without a centralised supply of drinking water. Currently, Mykolaiv residents receive water from a backup source, which raises many questions about the quality of the water and the salt content.

The salt water 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 salt water. As of August 2024, only about 3 kilometres of the network had been replaced.

All this time, 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 will be laid from Nova Odesa, and the money was allocated from the state budget.

The Regional Reconstruction Service has already 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 «Motorway».

The future water pipeline for Mykolaiv is expected to be built and launched by autumn 2025, said Serhii Sukhomlyn, head of the State Agency for Reconstruction.

However, the question of the new water supply system's design capacity remains unresolved: on the one hand, there is an opinion that water consumption in Mykolaiv has decreased, and therefore a new calculation needs to be made, and on the other hand, limiting the amount of water can directly affect the future development of the city and its industry.

Back during the conference in Berlin in 224, the First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Oleksandr Korniienko, answering a question 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 the water tariff for the city's residents, said Vitaliy Kim, head of the Regional Water Company.

At the same time, the contracting company «Avtostrada» explained that it was decided to lay a new water supply line for Mykolaiv from Nova Odesa, as it is the «closest site with good quality drinking water».

Read also the article NikVesti «Three years without drinking water: what will the future water supply be like for Mykolaiv?».