How dangerous is the shutdown of the Bortnychi treatment plant for the Dnipro: an expert made a forecast

UNIANThe shutdown of the Bortnychi Aeration Station in Kyiv will not lead to catastrophic pollution of the Dnipro River. This was said on the air of "Kyiv 24" by Oleksandr Serhiienko, director of the public organization "City Institute."

"About 118 million cubic meters of water pass by Kyiv every day. And the city's sewage discharge is 700 thousand. If you divide those, it turns out that Kyiv's sewage, which is more water than waste products, amounts to only 0,6%," he noted.

Thus, the expert says, in the worst case, if Bortnychi stop accepting wastewater, the entry of that 0,6% into the Dnipro "will in no way affect the condition of the water."

"All the more so because next is the Kaniv Reservoir, and the dirty water will be naturally cleaned," Serhiienko said, adding that the Bortnychi station is "very hard to destroy."

Russian threat to Kyiv's sewer system

As UNIAN reported, in August Viktor Taran, a public-political figure, noted that Russian invaders are deliberately striking the Bortnychi Aeration Station with ballistic missiles and that in the event of its complete shutdown, half of Ukraine's population would feel the consequences.

Later, Artem Shyra, an entrepreneur and vice president of the Ukrainian Water Association, expressed the view that a complete halt of the capital's sewage system is practically impossible, and the worst-case scenario could be localized outages at individual pumping stations.

In his words, the worst that could happen is "we will discharge untreated sewage into the Dnipro, and people won't even notice."

In addition, Oleksii Kucherenco, a people's deputy from Batkivshchyna and first deputy chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Energy and Housing and Communal Services, responding to a question about the alleged possibility of an epidemiological catastrophe in Kyiv due to a shutdown of the sewer system, noted that "it may happen, in extreme cases even that the Bortnychi station will overflow," so "as a last resort – it is discharge into the Dnipro."