The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam was a fast-progressing disaster that quickly developed into a long-term environmental disaster that affects drinking water, food supplies and ecosystems extending to the Black Sea.
Short-term threats may be seen from space – tens of hundreds of plots flooded, and more to come back. Experts say the long-term consequences shall be generational.
For each flooded home and farm, there are various fields of freshly sown cereals, fruits and vegetables, whose irrigation canals dry up.
Hundreds of fish lay on the muddy plains.
Young water birds have lost their nests and food sources.
Countless trees and plants have drowned.
If water is life, then the drainage of the Kakhovka Reservoir poses an uncertain future for the region of southern Ukraine, which was a dry plain until the damming of the Dnieper River 70 years ago.
The Kakhovka Dam was the last of a system of six Soviet-era dams on the river that flows from Belarus to the Black Sea.
![Houses seen underwater in a flooded village near Kherson, Ukraine, Saturday, June 10.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/AP23161709560196.jpg?w=1024)
Then The Dnieper became a part of the front line after Russia invaded last yr.
“The whole territory has created its own special ecosystem, including the reservoir,” said Kateryna Filiuta, an authority on protected habitats on the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group.
Short term
Ihor Medunov is very much a part of this ecosystem.
His job as a hunting and fishing guide effectively ended with the beginning of the war, but he stayed on his small island property along with his 4 dogs because it seemed safer than the choice.
Even so, for a lot of months he was concerned concerning the knowledge that Russian forces controlled the dam downstream.
The six dams along the Dnieper were designed to work in tandem, adjusting to one another because the water level rose and fell from season to season.
When the Russian troops occupied the Kakhovka dam, the complete system fell into disrepair.
Whether intentionally or just carelessly, Russian forces allowed the water level to fluctuate uncontrollably.
In winter, they dropped dangerously low and then reached historic highs because the melting snows and spring rains collected in the reservoir.
Until Monday, water was moving into Medunow’s lounge.
Now, with the destruction of the dam, he watches his livelihood literally drain away.
The waves that stood on its doorstep a week ago at the moment are a step away from a muddy walk.
![Houses are visible underwater in the flooded city of Oleshky.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/AP23161709619803.jpg?w=1024)
“The water is draining before our eyes,” he told the Associated Press. “All the things that was in my house, that we worked for all our lives, is gone. First it drowned, then, when the water left, it rotted.”
For the reason that dam collapsed on Tuesday, the rushing waters had torn anti-personnel mines, tore through weapons and ammunition depots and carried 150 tons of machine oil into the Black Sea.
Whole cities were flooded to the roofline, and hundreds of animals have died in a large national park now under Russian occupation.
![Streets and a commercial port are visible underwater and oil-polluted in flooded Kherson.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/AP23161710023272.jpg?w=1024)
Rainbow patches already cover the murky, calm waters around flooded Kherson, the capital of the province of the identical name in southern Ukraine.
Abandoned houses reek of decay as cars, first floor rooms and basements remain submerged.
Huge patches seen in aerial photos stretch across the river from the town’s port and industrial facilities, showing the dimensions of the brand new Dnieper pollution problem.
![View of the flooded district of Kherson.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/AP23161805285031.jpg?w=1024)
Ukraine’s Ministry of Agriculture estimated that 10,000 hectares (24,000 acres) of agricultural land were under water in Ukrainian-controlled territory of Kherson province and “persistently more” in Russian-occupied territory.
Farmers are already feeling the pain of the disappearing reservoir. Dmytro Neveselyi, the mayor of the village of Maryinske, said that everybody in the community of 18,000 could be affected inside a few days.
“Today and tomorrow we are going to have the opportunity to offer drinking water to the residents,” he said. After who knows. “The canal that fed our reservoir also stopped flowing.”
Long-term
On Friday, the waters slowly began to recede to disclose an impending environmental disaster.
The reservoir, which had a capability of 18 cubic kilometers (14.5 million acres), was the last stop on a whole bunch of miles of river that flowed through Ukraine’s industrial and agricultural heartland.
For many years, its flow carried an outflow of chemicals and pesticides that settled in the mud at the underside.
![Rescuers evacuate an elderly resident from a flooded district of Kherson.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/AP23161805343395.jpg?w=1024)
Ukrainian authorities are examining the extent of poisons in the mud, which could turn into poisonous dust as summer approaches, said Eugene Simonov, an environmental scientist with the Working Group on the Consequences of the War in Ukraine, a non-profit organization of activists and scientists.
The extent of long-term damage is dependent upon the movement of the front lines in an unpredictable war.
Can the dam and reservoir be rebuilt if the fighting there continues?
Should the region turn into an arid plain again?
Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Melnyk called the destruction of the dam “the worst environmental disaster in Europe because the Chernobyl disaster.”
Fish and waterfowl which have turn into depending on the reservoir will “lose most of their spawning and feeding grounds,” Simonow said.
There are about 50 protected areas downstream from the dam, including three national parks, said Simonov, who co-authored an October paper warning against potentially catastrophic consequencesboth upstream and downstream if the Kakhovka Dam fails.
In line with Filiuta, it can be a decade before the flora and fauna populations return and adapt to the brand new reality.
And maybe longer for the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians living there.
![The streets and the commercial port are visible underwater and oil-polluted in Kherson.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/AP23161709738503.jpg?w=1024)
![Ukrainian soldiers sail a boat in a flooded district of Kherson.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/AP23161805773635.jpg?w=1024)
Within the agricultural commune of Maryinske, they’re combing the archives for records of old wells, which they may dig up, clean and analyze to see if the water is still drinkable.
“Because a territory without water will turn into a desert,” the mayor said.
Then all of Ukraine may have to race whether to rebuild the reservoir or think otherwise concerning the way forward for the region, its water supply and a large area that suddenly became vulnerable to invasive species – because it was exposed to the invasion that caused the disaster.
“The worst consequences will probably not affect us directly, not me, not you, but slightly our future generations, because this man-made catastrophe is not transparent,” Filiuta said. “The consequences that can come will affect our youngsters or grandchildren, just as we at the moment are experiencing the results of the Chernobyl disaster, not our ancestors.”