“Of course it’s a war crime!”

The tram number 2108 slows down when approaching Potomkinska Street. On this March afternoon, in this district a little away from Mykolaiv, the old red and white train is as eagerly awaited as the postman: a good sixty people are massed on both sides of the road, empty cans as suitcases. It contains several water cisterns. “I have these four big bottles to fill, five liters each time, twenty liters in all”calculates Anatoliï, 73, pushing his trolley on wheels to the pipes.

“With my wife, it’s our new outing, we tell the others that we’re going down to fill up.”

Anatoly, retired

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In his house as in that of the 500,000 inhabitants of Mykolaiv, tap water has been undrinkable for a year. “Downright disgusting evengrins Oksana, boots on her feet and twenty-litre jerry cans under her arm. The water is all yellow, like copper. Yellow in the sink, yellow in the shower, yellow in the toilet. And salty too. Salty, salty, salty! She’s good at flushing and that’s it.”

The tram will remain parked there for an hour, before heading to another part of the city to continue its tour. Sitting warm in her cabin, driver Valentina makes sure there is plenty of water for everyone. “There are no rules, everyone takes what they want, but within reasonshe corrects, wrapped up in her golden down jacket. I always keep an eye on the level of the tanks.”

“If I see it dropping too fast, I go down to make sure everyone has water.”

Valentina, tram driver

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That day, Valentina, who transported travelers before the war, had twelve tons of water available.

The city of Mykolaiv, as populous as Nantes, is facing an entirely new situation: because of the war, it can no longer transport its water from the Dnipro river, north of Kherson. Here it is forced to pump salt water in the estuary of the southern Bug, very close to the Black Sea, in order to supply the distribution network.

Water dangerous to health

From April 2022, Russian forces began destroying pipelines in four places in the Kyselivka area: twice on the surface and twice underground. The local authorities carried out the necessary repairs, but now it is the pumping stations that are hit by the enemy. And it is too risky for the employees of the Mykolaivvodokanal company to venture on the bank of the Dnipro, which acts as a front line. Viktor Babiak knows something about it. A welder for twelve years in the company, he was part of the small team sent to the field to repair the water pipes. “It was scary to workhe says. During the repairs, the sites were repeatedly bombarded by the Russians. Every day we had to look for shelter. We had to equip ourselves with bulletproof vests and helmets.”

At the company’s laboratory, located on the outskirts of the city, we observe the damage. Olga Luborets places three of the 200 samples to be analyzed each day on the bench. White coat on the back, she is responsible, among other things, for checking the hardness of the water, that is to say the concentration of calcium and magnesium. Beyond 7 mmol/L, the risks are serious for health, in particular for the kidneys. After mixing the water into a solution, the verdict falls in a few seconds: “We exceed 20, observes the technician, positioning the container in the light. If we boiled this water, we might even see a white deposit of concentrated calcium carbonate.”

In the next room, her colleague Nadejda Rijenkova does not take her eyes off her mass spectrograph, looking for possible traces of toxic elements. From experience, she knows that the weather conditions further aggravate the situation.

“When the wind comes from the south, the water from the Black Sea is carried towards the river. This further increases the hardness of the water and the amount of chlorides.”

Nadejda Rijenkova, laboratory assistant

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Another problem that locals often complain about: “an unpleasant smell of earth”, related to the presence of phytoplankton.

Wells to survive

In order to guarantee access to drinking water, the local administration has launched a campaign to drill wells. And 120 distribution points allow the population to get fresh water. People get their supplies there morning, noon and evening, and even during the alerts. “Write that the Russians have been depriving us of water for a year”annoyed a man, exhausted by “these sufferings”, before evaporating in one of the buildings on Observatorna Street. Tanker trucks sometimes pass through the more isolated neighborhoods.

And even, “Fortunately”, make it clear to the local authorities, most of the inhabitants who fled the city have not yet returned. And many companies remain at a standstill.

In the streets, large advertising posters over several square meters extol the merits of mineral water. All day long, the small grocery store at 61 avenue Centrale sells five-litre bottles, the first prices are at 40 p.m.ryvnya (1 euro). At 82 on the same street, the SV.IT restaurant is almost lucky: the establishment, which has its own well, only had to replenish its stock of filters to continue cooking for its customers. .

The gnawed pipes

But Mykolaiv suffers from another, deeper ailment. Day after day, salt water gnaws at the already dilapidated pipes. The regional capital therefore looks like a vast construction site, in order to seal what can be. Sunk one meter underground, in the garden of a municipal building, tworker kings replace an oxidized steel pipe with a new plastic one. “Yesterday, we came for a water leak in a cellar, but we wanted to check the pipe in the gardenexplains one of the employees, with a rusty beard from the years. It did not fail, she was totally eaten.”

“It hasn’t stopped for months”, sighs Valentin Chandartchuk, the site foreman, squatting at the bottom of the trench. From now on, the working days of the workers of the Mykolaivvodokanal company stretch from 8 am to 8 pm. Between three and five missions per day, for small jobs. One or two, when there is more to do. “Sometimes the vibrations caused by the bombardments damage the concrete pipes over a great distance. You can’t see anything at first sight, but there can be cracks for about twenty meters.”

His phone keeps ringing. This time, it’s an acquaintance at the end of the line:

“When do you think you’ll come to my house to do the repairs?

– I don’t know… Not before three days anyway…”

A permanently damaged network

Do not ask the mayor of Mykolaiv when the situation will return to normal in his city. “Stupid question”got annoyed Oleksandr Sienkevych, on national television, Monday, March 27. “Unfortunately, I am no longer able to deliver forecastsconfirms Borys Dudenko, the general manager of the water company. It all depends on our armies, and their success against Russia, to secure this shore and allow our employees to work there.”

The situation is urgent. Due to corrosion, “we are registering ten to fifteen times more leaks on the network than before the war”, continues the manager. Evidenced by this pipe ten centimeters in diameter placed on his desk, ready to crumble. A small label even indicates its origin: 56 Kouznetska Street, in the city center.

The company had to sign contracts with five subcontracting companies, as its 1,300 employees are overwhelmed. “It happens that work is carried out, and that it is necessary to return to the same pipe the following week, for another leak a few meters further.” The work to come is titanic, and more than half of the network will have to be changed. “If the war ended tomorrow? It would take two weeks to supply fresh water to the inhabitants again.” But to fully restore the distribution system, “there, it would take between five and fifteen years.”

In the meantime, the director is also worried about the safety of his employees, who travel the region in their trucks stamped with a water tower logo. Since the beginning of the war, five of them have been injured in the exercise of their mission, but all are out of the woods. The city of Mykolaiv couldn’t get enough of the bombings and power cuts. “If it’s a war crime? Of course it’s a war crime. Depriving civilians of water is a war crime.”