Sienkevych: Denmark is ready to provide €45 million to modernise new sewage treatment facilities in Mykolaiv, together with an EIB loan

Mayor of Mykolaiv Oleksandr Senkevich, photo by "NikVesti"

The Danish government is ready to provide a grant of €45 million to modernise new treatment facilities to provide Mykolaiv with high-quality centralised water supply.

This was announced by Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych during a city council session on 12 March, according to NikVesti.

As is known, a contractor is currently building new water treatment facilities for the city with funds from the state budget. However, Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych insists that they need to be modernised in the future — equipped with modern membrane filters. This, says the mayor, will allow water to be purified to drinking quality even from the Inhulets River, which is an alternative source for the city in case of repeated damage to the water pipeline as a result of shelling.

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The total cost of the water treatment plant modernisation project is currently €80 million, of which €45 million is to be provided by the Danish government, with the remainder coming from EIB loans, the mayor said.

«The European Investment Bank estimated that the project would cost around €120 million. But its cost has been reduced to approximately €80 million — again, without project and cost estimate documentation.

In addition, during this time, we have managed to reach an agreement with our partners from Denmark, who are ready to provide €45 million in non-repayable funding for this project. They have allocated these funds in their financing for the next three years. The European Investment Bank says: «We are ready to finance all other issues with a loan from the European Investment Bank», said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

However, the mayor once again emphasised that Mykolaiv's budget does not have the funds to repay the EIB loan and believes that this obligation should be assumed by the state.

«Firstly, we do not have the money in the budget today. Secondly, I do not see any real levers to increase the money in the budget so that we can take on another additional loan. Thirdly, I believe that we, the people of Mykolaiv, did nothing to destroy our water intake system; it was Russia and the war that did it. Therefore, we cannot pay for it with funds that we do not have.

Therefore, I believe that the state should cover these costs. In other words, the Ministry of Finance should cover these costs, record them, pay them off and build these treatment facilities, and then demand this money in the form of reparations from the funds frozen by European institutions from Russia's assets. We have neither the authority, nor the capabilities, nor the tools to do this,» said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

Read also the article by NikVesti «The state is building new treatment facilities, while Mykolaiv insists on their modernisation with an EIB loan: what will the city gain from this?»

When will the new water treatment plants 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.

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. The final decision was made 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, when it was connected to the water supply network.