Tuesday’s destruction of the massive Soviet-era Kakhovka The dam on the Dnipro River in the Ukrainian city of Nova Kakhovka has damaged homes and threatens residents, animals, crops and public infrastructure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the dam collapse, which he blamed on Russia, “an environmental bomb of mass destruction.”
The dam is part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station in Ukraine’s Kherson region, which Russia has occupied as part of the war against its smaller neighbor. The Dnipro River is the frontline between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
The governments of Russia and Ukraine blame each other, saying the dam was destroyed by an explosion orchestrated by their enemy. U.S. agencies have intelligence that suggests Russia is to blame, and a senior NATO official told NBC News that Russia, not Ukraine, could benefit from the disaster.
According to Reuters, the dam is 30 meters high and 3.2 kilometers long and the reservoir it created holds 4.3 cubic kilometers of water – about the same as the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Releasing that much water will have enormous consequences.
Floods, property damage
The Ukrainian government says more than 40,000 people along the Dnipro are at risk of flooding. Both the Russian and Ukrainian governments have ordered evacuations.
“Images from Kherson show roofs floating along the river and other houses half submerged. Flood waters are expected to peak on Wednesday,” Yahoo News reported.
“Ukrainian officials said evacuations were underway,” USA Today reported. “The Russian-installed mayor of Nova Kakhovka, a city of about 45,000, said his city was underwater, state media reported.”
“Residents are sitting on the roofs of their houses waiting to be rescued,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in Telegram.
Water levels are expected to peak on Wednesday morning.
Threats to human health
Apart from the risk of drowning, flooding poses a range of health hazards. Because flood waters suck up debris from the buildings they enter, they contain “many things that can harm health,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns.
This includes broken electrical cables, human and animal waste, hazardous chemicals from industrial installations and sharp or heavy objects. Contact with any of these substances can lead to wounds, rashes, gastrointestinal diseases and tetanus.
Flood water can also contaminate wells, aquifers and reservoirs, making drinking water unsafe to consume.
“Every hour there is more and more water. It is very dirty,” Yevheniya, a woman in Nova Kakhovka, told Reuters.
“Contaminated water supplies and broader environmental impacts are expected as a result of the incident,” Time Magazine noted in Ukraine.
Damage to important infrastructure
According to CNN, the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy said that “nearly 12,000 people in the Kherson region had lost power due to the floods and that there ‘may be problems with water supply.’”
“We understand that there will be major problems regarding the supply of drinking water,” Zelensky said. “There will be major problems with drinking water even if there are no floods. Throughout the region.”
Then there is the nearby nuclear power plant.
“The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant depends on water from the Dnieper River to cool its emergency diesel generators and reactors,” Time reported. “The water reservoir is currently dropping by five centimeters per hour, which means that the supply of cooling water must last at least a few days. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency wrote in a statement that ‘there is no immediate risk to the safety of the plant.’”
There is also the water supply for the Crimean Peninsula which comes from the river.
“The destruction of the dam threatens to lower the water level of the Soviet-era North Crimean Canal, which has traditionally supplied Crimea with 85% of its water needs,” Reuters reported. “Most of that water is used for agriculture, some for industries on the Black Sea Peninsula, and about a fifth for drinking water and other public needs.”
Animals and crops
An unknown number of farm animals and pets have already drowned as a result of the dam breach. According to a Facebook post by the animal rescue group UAnimals, all 260 animals at the Kazkova Dibrova zoo in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka died during the flood, except for the swans and ducks.
Ukraine is a major exporter of wheat and flooding of farms is expected to damage crops. As a result, wheat and corn futures rose on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
“The short-term impact is the damage to grain silos and other equipment located in the low banks of the river,” Sergey Feofilov, head of UkrAgroConsult, told Bloomberg News. “Exactly which silos are, whether there are grains in the silos and how much of the grain may be rotting is unclear at this time. The long-term impact will be much more dramatic.”