Ukrainian scientists tally the grave environmental consequences of the Kakhovka Dam disaster

Kyiv and Odesa, Ukraine— In the predawn hours of 6 June 2023, a pair of explosions rocked the Kakhovka Dam, a 3-kilometer-long hydropower facility on the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine. Waking up that morning to the unfolding catastrophe, “I couldn’t believe it,” recalls Volodymyr Osadchyi, director of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute (UHMI). “I thought it had to be fake news.” But footage captured by a Ukrainian military drone showed water from one of Europe’s largest reservoirs gushing through a gaping breach in the dam. Over the next 4 days, 18 cubic kilometers of water surged downstream, inundating more than 620 square kilometers and affecting 80 settlements. Scores of people died, and many more are unaccounted for. Up to 1 million people lost access to drinking water. In October, the Ukrainian government pegged the cost of the disaster , which it blames on Russia, at roughly $14 billion. Nearly half that figure— $6.4 billion—is an estimate of lost ecosystem services due to chemical pollution and habitat destruction along the Dnipro, one of Europe’s largest rivers. Assessing environmental harm in the midst of a war in which the Dnipro itself delineates more than 300 kilometers of the front line is not easy. But Osadchyi and other Ukrainian researchers have been sobered by what they’ve found so far. The toll includes heavy damage to a unique sturgeon breeding facility, flooding of nature reserves and agricultura...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news