For the moment, people are still swimming in the Dnipro. But lab tests have shown excessive levels of 16 kinds of harmful admixtures.
Ukrainian rivers are a threat to human health and life. This is not an overstatement. According to Viktor Koshel, head of the state department of ecology and natural resources in Luhansk oblast, 88 local rivers are affected mostly by industry; there are 500 large industrial projects within the boundaries of intake basins, along with 488 waste piles, and 87 solid domestic waste dumps.
The situation is especially acute in the Siversky Donets and Mius river basins, which receive up to 60% of all sewage. These rivers are connected to the water arteries of Russia’s Rostov oblast and the Sea of Azov. The sea annually receives 4 billion m3 of sewage, including 1.9 m3 of crude waste.
Most of this waste water comes from industrial projects and sewers, and the main reason is low capacities and obsolete sewage disposal plants.
The small river Krasna, a tributary of the region’s main river Siversky Donets, flows through three districts - Troyitske, Svatove, and Kreminna - of Luhansk oblast. In keeping with a cabinet resolution, it is the industrial section of a number of fisheries. Oleksandr Poliakov, chief ichthyologist of the Luhansk regional fishing control authority, the Krasna is inhabited by more than 22 species of fish. Once crystal clear and beautiful, today it is a dying river that is being slowly poisoned by regular waste discharges.
In 1999-2001 fish were dying en masse in the section of the river exposed to these effluents, yet a file was submitted to the prosecutor’s office only in 2004, after facts relating to the destruction of fish stocks and pollution of the river were duly put on record. Local environmentalists and the regional fishing control authority have also sounded the alarm. Experts at the SES chemical laboratory have taken water samples in three Krasna sections and found that the ammonia content is rising from 0.2 to 0.4%, with oxygen dropping from 4.5 to 1.4 mg/l.
“Such a sharp water oxygen decline is caused by sewage,” explains Oleksandr Poliakov, “and this sewage contains substances requiring lots of oxygen for the biochemical oxidation process. This dramatic decline in oxygen is killing fish en masse. Fish can live without oxygen between several minutes and several hours, and river species are especially vulnerable. The lowest allowable minimum of water oxygen content is 2-3 mg/l. So fish are dying.
Local villagers say they know when every waste discharge occurs by watching the fish: they swim close to the surface and start gulping air. In the section of the river between the villages of Miluvatka and Novonikolske 639 perches, 218 breams, 238 roaches, 91 pikes, and 51 tenches have died. The fishing control authority estimates the damage at over UAH 26,000.
Dying fish, however, is only one part of the problem. The small river has turned into an enemy of the people living nearby.
“The local children have had nowhere to swim for several years,” complains pensioner Mykola Biloivanenko. “My grandson came to visit us from Rubizhne and we didn’t notice him running down to the river and taking a dip. His body later broke out in a terrible rash. He was under treatment for a month and nothing seemed to help. I once washed my feet in the river and then had a rash up to the knees. So we are living next to a river but without river water.”
Local villages don’t even use the river for watering their gardens. Novomykilske’s 100 cows drink from the river, and some cows die because the ammonia-rich water burns out their stomachs.
It is now known that the sewage was coming from Svatove’s sewers. Serhiy Shumakov, head of the Svatove department of the Starobilsk regional production directorate OKP Luhanskvoda, says that crude waste water was received by the directorate’s sewage disposal plants from Svatove’s milk processing factory, which also produces casein. Casein waste is causing these problems. The factory also has sewage disposal facilities, but for some reason they stop functioning now and then, whereas local sewage disposal plants cannot handle the high concentration of harmful substances because they need major repairs. Svatove’s fresh water suppliers estimate the damage inflicted by the milk processing factory at around UAH 50,000. The case is being investigated by the prosecutor’s office. The Svatove district authorities have given their assurance that repairs to the sewage disposal plants will start this year, and Serhiy Shumakov has even invited journalists to visit next year and taste the crystal clear water at the sewage disposal plants.