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Ukraine: Around 700,000 people affected by fast depletion of Kakhovka Reservoir after dam's destruction

UN humanitarians have continued to respond to serious food and water shortages in Ukraine following the Kakhovka dam disaster, delivering relief supplies on Friday to vulnerable families in the rural Kherson Region, close to the front line.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by the destruction of the dam on 6 June 2023 which has impacted water supplies, sanitation and sewage systems, in addition to health services.

As part of the aid effort, the UN Children’s Fund and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) transported live-saving water and food to families by boat, only 15 kilometres from the contact line.

“We are using today four boats to deliver assistance to these 500 families, a small community that is here close by where I am now”, said Saviano Abreu, head of communications for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ukraine. “These communities, they already have been facing the consequences of the war. This area was before under Russian control. Late last year around November, it was retaken by Ukraine and now, they are now facing this new catastrophe with the flooding here.”

The emptying of Kakhovka Reservoir has left tens of thousands of people in southern Ukraine without access to piped water, mainly in Dnipropetrovska oblast.

The reservoir – one of the largest in Europe and a source of drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people – is reportedly 70 per cent empty, according to Ukrainian authorities. The width of the reservoir has also decreased from three kilometres to one, while the water level is now at around seven meters, which is below the 12-metre operational threshold, OCHA reported.

“Our calculation is that 200,000 people in the Dnipro region, for example, they have already been cut off from the water from their houses,” said Mr. Abreu. “But a number of families, of people, that could face this kind of this same situation goes up to more than 700,000 people because these are the people that the reservoir would be the source of drinking water around southern Ukraine, not only here in the Kherson region.”

Large urban areas in Dnipropetrovska oblast, including Pokrovska, Nikopolska and Marhanetska, are completely cut off from centralized water and others like Apostolivska and Zelenodolska have extremely limited access. This has left over 210,000 people in this area alone in urgent need of life-saving water, according to estimates from the United Nations and its humanitarian partners.

The receding floodwater has also created other deadly challenges in the form of landmines that have been scattered far and wide.

“This area, I think it is one of the most mine contaminated parts of the world,” said Mr Saviano. “We already know that, and here in the southern part of the country it is one of the main issues. It is the reason, why for example, agriculture in Kherson, in Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia have been impacted because of the mine contamination, so the floodwater is moving the mines, that is a reality.”

Abigail Hartley, Chief of Policy, Advocacy and Donor Relations section from the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) added that “when the water subsides the mines are there. (The) good thing is that mines float, so they do stay on the surface. But, of course, there's a lot of other flood debris and they can get buried in sediment. So, it is a challenge as the already awful situation there. But the Ukrainian state services have done a good job of de-mining so far in Ukraine.”

Since the destruction of Kakhovka dam, OCHA and its humanitarian partners have continued life-saving operations and delivered at least 10 inter-agency convoys with vital items to thousands of people affected by the disaster.

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Update Response Kakhovka Dam Destruction OCHA - UNMAS

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