by Ol'ga Borisova
[REGNUM] The lack of tap water is a problem that Donetsk residents have been living with for three years now. After the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal, which supplied the city with water from the Dnieper, was blown up in 2022, various solutions were tried: a new Don-Donbass water pipeline, reservoirs, total savings. But the situation did not improve radically.
Now the DPR authorities have decided to resort to a method that many call extreme - to clean up mine waters. First, the first deputy chairman of the DPR government Andrey Chertkov spoke about this, and during the direct line on February 18, the head of the republic Denis Pushilin also said so.
According to him, the Don-Donbass water pipeline, together with the rather depleted reservoirs, covers about 50% of the agglomeration’s needs, “therefore, Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin gave the order to find additional opportunities to provide the population with water while the Kiev regime continues its water blockade.”
Using mine water is one of the options being considered. However, it raises many questions and frank concerns among Donetsk residents.
Previously, water from Donbass mines had never been used - Soviet research showed that it was full of bacterial impurities, mineral salts and heavy metals that were dangerous to humans.
Scientists call mine waters dangerous even when they enter rivers and reservoirs naturally - they are highly mineralized, releasing "dead air" with an oxygen content of less than 21%. The concentration of chlorides, carbonates, sulfates, as well as coal particles and rust are also dangerous.
There have been attempts to clean mine waters in mining regions in other countries, at least the projects in the US and China are widely known. But they were not always successful - at a minimum, the work was too expensive.
In turn, Ukrainian environmental organizations have previously written a lot about the mines of Donbass: according to their data, the most dangerous were the mines in Zolote in the LPR (Pervomayskugol), the Golubovskaya mine and Yunkom in Yenakiyevo (it was closed in 2002 due to fears of the consequences of an underground nuclear explosion carried out in 1979).
It is obvious that the DPR authorities also understand the danger, which is why they are announcing a thorough study of each mine, which will take a lot of time. It is also clear that in peacetime, even more time would be devoted to this purely scientific process, notes Viktor Tarasenko, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, Chairman of the Crimean Republican Association "Ecology and Peace", President of the Crimean Academy of Sciences, in an interview with IA Regnum, but now times are hard.
"Of course, there are always concerns about mine pollution, desalination of water, but the main thing in this situation is to provide civilians and troops with water. I am sure that this water will pass through all the treatment facilities, in accordance with all sanitary standards - in our country, this is strictly monitored," says Tarasenko.
The agency's interlocutor emphasizes: of course, we are not talking about radioactive ores, but in the current situation we have to resort to measures that no one would have thought about under other circumstances.
Already in peacetime, the doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences continues, it will be possible to return to traditional methods of water supply - there will be water from the Seversky Donets and Oskol, which flows a little further north.
But even if modern technologies really do manage to purify mine water to an acceptable condition, the question of payment remains. The treatment plant is very expensive, will it be able to pay for itself on the scale of the DPR? And who can guarantee that Donetsk residents, who are already complaining about huge water bills, will not start receiving “golden” bills?
FOUR MAIN PROBLEMS
IA Regnum has written many times about the catastrophic water situation in Donetsk, Gorlovka, Makeyevka, small towns and villages of Donbass. Four key problems can be identified.
Problem one: in a number of villages and districts of Donetsk there is no water at all in the taps after the shelling of the Seversky Donetsk-Donbass canal in February-March 2022. Many Donetsk residents live according to water supply schedules, while the schedules published by utility services often do not coincide with reality, and technical and drinking water is brought in by volunteers and the military.
Residents of the villages are saving themselves with rainwater. The water does not reach the upper floors of apartment buildings due to weak voltage. And since there is no 24-hour supply, the pipes rust, breakthroughs occur regularly - there are few repair crews and their work is mortally dangerous.
Moreover, as Alexey Rutsko, a journalist for the publication “Bloknot Donetsk,” told IA Regnum, practically all the sources from which Donetsk and its agglomeration received water—quarries, lakes, reservoirs—have been exhausted to the point of dryness.
Problem two: the quality of tap water. Despite assurances from local authorities that it “meets the standards of technical regulations in an emergency situation at the outlet of the filtration station,” the liquid actually flowing from the tap leaves much to be desired.
Back in September, the head of the DPR instructed the republic's construction ministry and the state unitary enterprise "Voda Donbassa" to conduct a sanitary and epidemiological examination of the supplied water and "develop a set of measures to improve it." At that time, Donetsk residents reported that even after waiting for several hours of life-saving moisture, they did not see any water - "Nutella" was flowing from the taps: a muddy brown liquid into which the water turns, reaching the city residents through pipes that had not been repaired for years.
Problem three: even those who have not received water since March 2022 must pay for it. Then, on the first day of spring, the DPR introduced a moratorium on paying for water supply, but on August 29, 2024, the Voda Donbassa company announced that it would begin charging Donetsk residents for water, and from August 7, in fact, retroactively.
Already at the end of September, Donetsk residents who received the first bills told IA Regnum that they were horrified: the amounts were two to three times higher than even the most pessimistic expectations.
The agency's interlocutor, Yulia, who lives in the village of Lidievka, part of the Kirovsky district of Donetsk, emphasized: there has been no water since the spring of 2022, and a debt has appeared in her personal account. The woman assured: she will not pay the bills, but will definitely collect all the payments in case of court cases.
Problem number four: a huge number of accidents on water mains. In just one day, February 19, repair crews eliminated 281 accidents on the territory of the republic. At the same time, the crews have to work under constant shelling, and the pipes are often in a deplorable state.
In frontline villages and parts of the Kirovsky, Petrovsky and Kuibyshevsky districts of Donetsk adjacent to the line of combat, there have been no major repairs of intra-house communications for a long time, and the few repair teams that go to the sites of breakthroughs become targets for enemy drones. This was previously reported in a commentary to IA Regnum by the deputy of the DPR People's Council, chairman of the People's Council Committee on Agro-Industrial Complex and Land Relations Yuri Leonov.
It is obvious that cleaning mine water alone will not solve these long-standing problems.