Fears of environmental disaster mount after Ukraine dam break

[niyad]

(lengthy, horrifying description of the destruction and consequences)


Fears of environmental disaster mount after Ukraine dam break

An estimated 700,000 people are in need of clean water around the Nova Kakhovka dam as Kyiv accuses Moscow of ‘ecocide’.
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At least 28 people are reported to have died and dozens of villages remain flooded due to the collapse of Ukraine's Soviet-era Nova Kakhovka dam [Libkos/AP]
By Federica Marsi and Mansur Mirovalev
Published On 16 Jun 202316 Jun 2023

Kyiv, Ukraine – Among displaced communities along the banks of Ukraine’s Dnipro River, bottled water has become the most coveted commodity. The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam on June 6 in the southern region of Kherson unleashed 18 cubic kilometres (4.3 cubic miles) of water that submerged villages and farmland. While water is all around, none of it is drinkable.
“It is all poisoned,” Pavlo Khrapun, a humanitarian worker with the NGO Project Hope, told Al Jazeera.

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Drinking water is delivered under the near-constant sound of shelling [Pavlo Khrapun/Project Hope]

The man-made flood washed away chemical fertilisers from cultivated fields, flushed away pollutants from the riverbed, submerged cemeteries and released at least 150 tonnes of machine oil from the breached dam with additional fuel and industrial waste likely to have been discharged from plants around it. Khrapun, an expert in WASH – water, sanitation and hygiene – said his team has been working non-stop to deliver drinking water amid the almost constant sound of shelling and the threat posed by anti-tank and amphibious mines dislodged by the deluge. “People are very tired, very stressed, but mutual help motivates them,” Khrapun said. “They are focused on helping each other.”
. . . .

The United Nations estimated an “extraordinary” 700,000 people are in need of clean drinking water. UN Undersecretary General Martin Griffiths told Al Jazeera the dam breach is certain to have repercussions that will be felt for years to come. “This is an absolute calamity,” Griffiths said.

Days after the explosion that caused the dam to collapse, Ukraine is still trying to find words for what it considers a crime.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of deliberately blowing up the dam and said the sabotage amounted to a “war crime”, “an act of terrorism” and “brutal ecocide”.The portmanteau word, which combines “ecology” and “genocide”, describes the wilful destruction of the environment as a weapon of war and is codified at the national level by a few states. Proponents have yet to secure its adoption under international law, but Ukrainian activists are hopeful the circumstances of Russia’s war on Ukraine could create momentum to do so.

. . . . .




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Zelenskyy says the dam breach amounted to ‘brutal ecocide’ [Libkos/AP]
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Debris is cleared after the floods [Pavlo Khrapun/Project Hope]
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Reporting by Mansur Mirovalev in Kyiv and Federica Marsi in Milan.

Video Duration 00 minutes 39 seconds 00:39
Drone video shows extent of flooding in Ukraine’s Kherson

Source: Al Jazeera


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/16/fears-of-environmental-disaster-mount-after-ukraine-dam-blast

[captain queeg]

1. The worst disasters, in terms of human deaths, in history have been floods

The flood itself doesn’t kill most people. It’s the aftermath, with lack of clean water, disease, and destruction of crops. That continues to kill people after the flood waters recede.