A flooded residential area is seen following the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in the town of Hola Prystan in Russia-controlled Ukraine’s Kherson region on June 8, 2023.
Alexander Ermochenko | Reuters
The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam was a fast-moving disaster that is quickly becoming a long-term environmental disaster, affecting the drinking water, food supply and ecosystems of the Black Sea.
The short-term dangers are visible from outer space — tens of thousands of lands are inundated, with more to come. Experts say the long-term consequences will be passed down from generation to generation.
For every home and farm that has been flooded, there are fields of newly planted grains, fruits and vegetables whose irrigation canals are drying up. Thousands of fish were left panting on the mudflats. The chicks lost their nests and food sources. Numerous trees and plants were submerged.
If water is life, the draining of the Kakhovka reservoir spells an uncertain future for southern Ukraine, which was a dry plain until the Dnieper was dammed 70 years ago. The Kakhovka Dam is the last of a system of six Soviet-era dams on the river, which flows from Belarus to the Black Sea.
The Dnieper became part of the front line after Russia invaded last year.
“All this territory has developed its own unique ecosystem, including reservoirs,” says Kateryna Filiuta, a protected habitat expert at Nature Conservancy Ukraine.
short term
Ihor Medunov is an important part of this ecosystem. His work as a hunting and fishing guide actually ended with the start of the war, but he and his four dogs stayed on his small island because it seemed safer than other options. Still, news that Russian forces had taken control of the downstream dam had worried him for months.
The six dams along the Dnieper are designed to operate in tandem, adjusting to each other as water levels rise and fall from one season to the next. When Russian troops occupied the Kakhovka Dam, the entire system was neglected.
Whether on purpose or not, the Russian military allowed the water levels to fluctuate uncontrollably. They drop to dangerously low levels in winter, then rise to historic peaks when snowmelt and spring rains collect in the reservoirs. The water was flooding Medunov’s living room until Monday.
Now, with the dam destroyed, he has watched his livelihood dwindle before his eyes. The waves that stood on his doorstep a week ago are now muddy walking distance.
“The water is running away before our eyes,” he told The Associated Press. “Everything in my house, everything we’ve worked so hard on all our lives, is gone. First it drowns, then, when the water leaves, it rots.”
Since the dam collapsed on Tuesday, rough waters have uprooted mines, washed away weapons and ammunition depots and carried 150 tons of motor oil into the Black Sea. Entire towns were submerged above the roofline, and thousands of animals died in a large national park now occupied by Russia.
A rainbow-colored oil slick has blanketed turbid calm waters around flooded Kherson, the capital of the southern Ukraine province of the same name. The abandoned house smelled of decay, and cars, first-floor rooms and basements were still flooded. The massive oil slick seen in aerial footage spanned the river from the city’s port and industrial facilities, showing the scale of the Dnieper’s new pollution problem.
Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry estimated that 10,000 hectares (24,000 acres) of farmland were under water in Ukrainian-controlled Kherson province, while in Russian-occupied territory “many times more than that”.
Farmers are already feeling the pain of the disappearance of the reservoir. Dmytro Neveselyi, mayor of Maryinske village, said everyone in the community of 18,000 people would be affected within days.
“Today and tomorrow, we will be able to provide people with drinking water,” he said. After that, who knows. “The canals that supply our reservoirs have also stopped flowing.”
in the long run
On Friday, the waters began to slowly recede, only to reveal a looming environmental catastrophe.
The reservoir, with a capacity of 18 cubic kilometers (14.5 million acre-feet), is the last stop of hundreds of kilometers of rivers that flow through Ukraine’s industrial and agricultural heartland. For decades, its flow has carried runoff of chemicals and pesticides deposited in bottom mud.
Eugene Simonov, an environmental scientist with the Ukrainian Working Group on the Environmental Consequences of the War, said Ukrainian authorities were testing the sludge for levels of toxins that could turn into toxic dust as summer progresses.
The extent of long-term damage depends on the movement of the front lines in an unpredictable war. Can the dam and reservoir recover if the fighting continues there? Should the area be a dry plain again?
Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Melnik called the dam’s destruction “the worst environmental disaster in Europe since the Chernobyl disaster”.
Fish and waterfowl that depend on the reservoirs “will lose most of their spawning and feeding grounds,” Simonov said.
There are about 50 protected areas downstream of the dam, including three national parks, Simonov said. He co-authored a paper in October warning of potentially catastrophic consequences upstream and downstream if the Kakhovka Dam is compromised.
According to Filiuta, it will take a decade for plant and animal populations to recover and adapt to the new reality. For the millions of Ukrainians who live there, it may be longer.
In Maryinske, the farming community, they are combing through archives for records of old wells, which they will dig, clean and analyze to see if they are still drinkable.
“Because territories without water will turn into deserts,” the mayor said.
And farther afield, all of Ukraine will have to grapple with whether to fix the reservoirs or make different decisions about the future of the region, its water supply, and the vast swathes of territory that are suddenly vulnerable to invasive species—as it is. Thinking about this led to the beginning of the disaster.
“The worst consequences may not directly affect us, not me, not you, but our children and grandchildren, because this man-made disaster is opaque,” Filiuta said. “The consequences of the future will be for our children and grandchildren, just as we are now experiencing the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, not our ancestors.”