Residents of Mykolaiv collected 8.3 million litres of treated drinking water from pump rooms in March

People collect purified water in Mykolaiv. Photo by NikVesti

In March, residents of Mykolaiv collected 8.3 million litres of free purified water at points set up by the utility company «Mykolaivoblteploenergo».

According to the company, more than 26.5 million litres of water have been provided to the city since the beginning of the year.

Currently, there are 79 distribution points in all districts of Mykolaiv. They are serviced by specialists of «Mykolaivoblteploenergo». In particular, they perform routine maintenance and control water quality.

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To ensure that Mykolaiv residents are always aware of where they can get water, the utility company «Mykolaivoblteploenergo» updates the data online:

• citywide map: https://cutt.ly/RwpcKeEi
• spreadsheet: https://cutt.ly/JwqhJU7s

As a reminder, Mykolaiv Oblast has started construction of a new water supply system that will provide Mykolaiv residents with drinking water after almost three years of its absence.

Water supply for Mykolaiv

Almost three years have passed since Russian troops damaged the water supply 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. 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.

Saltwater-damaged pipes stored at the company «Mykolaivvodokanal», August 2024, photo «NikVesti».

All this time, representatives of state and local authorities were looking for options to restore drinking water supply in Mykolaiv. The final solution was found in 2024: a new water supply system 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 supply system 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 relevant programme.