The aftermath of the terrorist attack on the Kakhovska Dam is poised to unleash an ecological catastrophe of global proportions
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The undermining of the Kakhovska HPP dam by the Russian occupiers on the night of June 6 led to a global environmental disaster, the devastating consequences of which are still unknown. Unique protected lands, along with many animals and birds, including species from the Red List, have been destroyed — perhaps forever. A toxic flow entered the Black Sea — exploding mines, thousands of tons of chemicals and soil, sewage waste, dead animals, uprooted trees, and toxic sludge deposits containing dust...
The giant Kakhovsky Reservoir had a volume of over 18 cubic kilometers and a length of 240 kilometers. According to the public organization "Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group," when it was built in the middle of the last century, with the help of hydraulic structures, the water level in the Dnipro River rose by as much as 16 meters. Therefore, according to experts' calculations, the consequences of a terrorist attack on wildlife are predicted in an area of at least 5 thousand square kilometers (flooding and drainage zones).
"More than 1,000 square kilometers of territory, which has been covered by the waters of the reservoir for the last almost 70 years, will be open to the sky," claim the representatives of the group.
According to the executive director of the public organization Rewilding Ukraine, Mykhailo Nesterenko, the consequences for nature, particularly wildlife, are terrible. It is about the destruction of an entire biocenosis — a unique landscape complex with all living organisms - plants, animals...
As a result of the blow-up of the hydroelectric power plant, the National Nature Park "Nizhnyodniprovskyi" was affected, and this is more than 80 thousand hectares of floodplain in Beryslavskyi, Bilozerskyi, Holoprystanskyi, and Oleshkivskyi districts, the cities of Kherson and Nova Kakhovka, most of which are currently flooded.
Environmentalists emphasize that the total area of flooded protected areas, including the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve (protected by law since 1927 and part of the UNESCO global network of biosphere reserves), may exceed 120,000 hectares.
The destruction of the Kakhovska HPP dam poses a great danger to the Black Sea because river water from flooded areas with a large amount of fuel and lubricants, hundreds of thousands of tons of soil, thousands of dead animals and birds, and uprooted trees is carried there. Plus waste from destroyed sewage systems and cesspools, residues of fertilizers and other chemicals, not to mention mines and other munitions that detonate directly in the water. Also, "big water" washes away cemeteries, cattle burial grounds; it also could potentially damage possible hazardous bio - and bio-chemical material storage / waste sites — plenty of them were situated in that area during the USSR times. This resounding mixture is likely to affect all marine life, from plankton to cetaceans.
There is one more nuance — the bottom sediments of the Kakhovsky Reservoir. They contain pollutants that have been accumulating for decades due to emissions from industrial enterprises in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kamian, and other settlements.
That dust is deadly — accumulating in the bodies of people and animals, it stimulates a decrease in immunity, and severe pathologies, including intrauterine ones. According to Balynskyi, the question of cleaning water bodies was raised from time to time, but it was never resolved — experts didn’t know how and where to dispose of large volumes of this sludge. Therefore, sapropel contamination of the water area of estuaries and the northwestern shelf of the Black Sea cannot be avoided.
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An additional source of environmental poisoning can be the flood-destroyed river system itself, which, like the liver in the human body, absorbs and accumulates hundreds of thousands of different substances. According to Balynskyi, other countries of the Black Sea region will feel the consequences of the poisoning of the sea together with Ukraine, since the current along the coast runs counterclockwise. In other words, the flow that is now going to Odessa will, in one form or another, will also reach Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and later — the aggressor state itself.?
After all, water doesn’t have stone fences and fundamental barriers made of steel.?
It’s not worth hoping that the "highway" pollution can dissolve in salty water.
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