Tuesday’s destruction of the massive Soviet-era Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River in the Ukrainian city of Nova Kakhovka has damaged homes and posed a threat to 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 plant in Ukraine’s Kherson region, which Russia has occupied as part of its war against its smaller neighbor. The Dnipro River is the front line between Russian and Ukrainian troops.
The governments of Russia and Ukraine blame each other, saying the dam was destroyed by an explosion orchestrated by their enemies. U.S. agencies have intelligence suggesting Russia is to blame, and a senior NATO official told NBC News that Russia, rather than Ukraine, stands to benefit from the disaster.
According to Reuters, the dam is 98 feet high and 2 miles long, and the reservoir it creates holds 4.3 cubic miles of water — about the same as Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Releasing that much water will have enormous consequences.
Flooding, property damage
The Ukrainian government says more than 40,000 people along the Dnipro are at risk of flooding. Both Russian and Ukrainian governments have ordered evacuations.
“Images from Kherson showed roofs floating in the river and other homes half submerged. Floodwaters 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 town of about 45,000, said his town was under water, state media reported.”
“Residents are sitting on the roofs of their houses waiting for rescue,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Telegram.
Water levels are expected to peak on Wednesday morning.
Threats to human health
In addition to the risk of drowning, flooding poses a range of health risks. As floodwaters pick up debris from the buildings they enter, “they contain many things that can be harmful to your health,” warns the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
These include fallen power lines, human and animal waste, hazardous chemicals from industrial facilities, and sharp or heavy objects. Contact with any of these can result in wounds, skin rashes, gastrointestinal illness, and tetanus.
Flood water can also contaminate wells, groundwater aquifers and reservoirs, making drinking water unsafe to drink.
“Every hour more and more water comes. It’s very dirty,” Yevheniya, a woman in Nova Kakhovka, told Reuters.
“Contaminated water supplies and further environmental impacts are expected as a result of the incident in Ukraine,” Time magazine said.
Damage to key infrastructure
According to CNN, Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said that “nearly 12,000 people in the Kherson region were without power due to the flooding and that there “may be problems with water supply.”
“We understand that there will be major problems with the supply of drinking water,” Zelensky said. “There will be major problems with drinking water even where there are no floods. In the entire region.”
Then there is the nearby nuclear power plant.
“The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant relies on water from the Dnieper River to cool its emergency diesel generators and reactors,” Time reported. “Currently, the water reservoir is dropping two inches per hour, meaning the supply of cooling water should last at least a few more days. The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency wrote in a statement that ‘there is no immediate risk to the safety of the plant.'”
The river also supplies water to the Crimean peninsula.
“The dam’s destruction could lead to a drop in the water level of the Soviet-era North Crimean Canal, which traditionally supplied 85 percent of Crimea’s water needs,” Reuters reported. “Most of that water is used for agriculture, some for industry 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 in the dam burst. According to a Facebook post by animal rescue group UAnimals, all 260 animals at the Kazkova Dibrova zoo in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka died in the flood, except for the swans and ducks.
Ukraine is a major exporter of wheat and flooding of farms is expected to damage crops, sending wheat and corn futures higher on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
“The short-term impact is damage to grain silos and other equipment located on the low banks of the river,” Sergey Feofilov, head of UkrAgroConsult, told Bloomberg News. “Exactly which silos, whether there is grain in the silos and how much of the grain is rotting, is still unclear. The long-term impact will be much more dramatic.”
