No electricity means no water: an interview with the deputy CEO of water utility Kyivvodokanal
This interview is with someone whose name probably won't mean much even to our Ukrainian readers. Then again, not everyone knows the chemical formula for water, yet no one can live without it. No one is going to die from not reading this interview, of course, but it is worth your attention, if only for its detailed account of the collapse that Kyiv is edging towards.
Our interviewee is Serhii Horkutsenko, Deputy CEO of Kyivvodokanal, the capital's water utility. Horkutsenko practically lives at work, because he is responsible for every emergency the company faces – from routine burst pipes to critical damage caused by Russian missile strikes.
Horkutsenko epitomises the expression "stuck between a rock and a hard place": on the one hand, as a representative of the water utility, he cannot bring the city to a standstill by leaving it with empty pipes; on the other, he has to speak out about the critical condition the company finds itself in.
It's a balancing act, and unless Horkutsenko handles it carefully, there's a chance that he – and the utility – will end up dead in the water in every sense of the phrase. Kyivvodokanal is caught like a hostage between two irreconcilable sides: the city authorities with their demand that the utility keep running without disruption, and the President's Office, which has frozen water tariffs at pre-war levels in pursuit of political gains.
The latest challenge facing the capital is that Kyiv residents' taps are running dry with increasing frequency. That's where this conversation began, although the most difficult part may still lie ahead. When the next spell of freezing cold weather arrives, Kyiv could well find itself back in the 1990s, with people queuing up outside their apartment buildings with plastic containers to collect water in.
To understand what Kyiv's water supply could look like in the future, it's worth trying to think like Kyivvodokanal – where five-litre bottles of water are already sitting in the toilets at head office.
Why has running water been increasingly disappearing lately when it was available before?
Water is not electricity. You can't switch it on and off at the meter. It's an inert system. If the electricity goes out, it takes time to switch to a second power line or a generator.
Water is the last basic utility to start disappearing during all these years of war. Why is this happening now?
Why is it happening now? Well, for starters, we haven't had outages like these before...
Power outages?
Yes. The problem isn't so much the electricity going off as the huge fluctuations in voltage. The entire electrical system at Kyivvodokanal dates back to the 1970s. It simply can't cope with fluctuations like these – the equipment burns out. And the electricians we still have then have to switch the electrical systems over manually.
Now, as to why we had water before but it's disappearing now: over the last four years we've lost 40% of our staff, because our tariffs have been frozen and people have quit. Frozen tariffs, plus the fact that only 50% of our staff were exempt from mobilisation [by law – ed.]. Two years ago they upped it to 75%, thank God, but once you lose an employee, you don't get them back.
So each person is doing the work of two?
Four.
If the Russians keep up their attacks at this level of intensity, at what point will Kyiv be left without water?
Do you mean when will there be no water in Kyiv's network, or when will there be no drinking water for residents? When we carry out scheduled repair work, we provide a water tanker. It delivers drinking water. As for what will happen with the water that's supplied directly to people's apartments, I don't know, to be honest with you.
There probably won't be any.
You may be right. Maybe it's more likely that people won't have running water than that they will. But I can guarantee that drinking water will be delivered and people will have it.
So basically Kyiv is now very close to the situation in Mykolaiv, where people have been living like this for years.
Actually I'd compare it to February, March and April 2022, when the amount of water supplied to Kyiv halved. We went through all of this in 2022. Of course, the situation is a lot worse now because the Russians have changed their tactics. But we don't just supply water – we also take the wastewater away. So let's set our priorities: which is more important, water supply or sewerage?
They're interconnected.
No. If there's no running water, you can bring bottles of water home, or a water tanker can come, or a water tank can be set up. But if the sewerage system stops working, you'll have an epidemiological disaster within three days, because people are not going to stop using toilets. The higher up you live, the easier it will be; people on the ground floor will be in serious trouble. So our priority is to do everything we can to take the wastewater away.
So the water will be cut off not because Kyivvodokanal facilities have been damaged, but because...
Because there is no way to take the wastewater away.
And that's because the electricity supply is limited?
Yes. A great deal has been done to keep the sewerage system functioning. Even over these past two days, the system has continued to operate. There was no electricity and a lot of other things weren't available, but it kept going.
But staffing is a major problem. Take yesterday [the interview took place on 9 October – ed.]. We needed to switch to backup power. There was one electrician or one power engineer covering five stations. He went to one station to deal with the problem there, then moved on to the second. Meanwhile, the third station went down while running on backup power.
There was only one electrician, travelling between them?
Two.
Do they travel in separate vehicles, or are there two electricians in one car?
Under the occupational safety regulations, they have to work together. We simply don't have enough people.
And Kyivvodokanal serves four million consumers?
Yes. It's the largest water utility in Europe.
Are they all within Kyiv?
No. There are some suburbs as well: Sofiivska Borshchahivka, Vyshhorod, Vyshneve and Kozyn have now been connected too. On the left bank [of the Dnipro River], there are some areas along the Boryspil and Brovary routes. There are a lot of suburbs. In some places we only provide wastewater services, in others we supply water as well.
Kyivvodokanal's capacity was designed on the assumption that all of Kyiv's industrial facilities would be operating. So we have some spare capacity. But the problem is that the system was set up to supply water to industrial companies, and those industrial sites have since been redeveloped for housing.
There are reports that the Russians would only need to conduct two or three precision strikes on key facilities at the Bortnychi Aeration Plant to put it out of action for a long time. Is that true?
No. The Bortnychi Aeration Plant covers such a vast area and has so many duplicate points that an enormous area would have to be covered.
They won't hit the fields. The issue is the channels that carry sewage to the fields.
The main sewers run beneath the metro. Problems are possible, but we're not sitting idly by. We'll divert the wastewater from the city to two or three designated points.
So it wouldn't go to the plant, but somewhere else. Do you mean the Dnipro?
Not exactly. Just so you know, the treated wastewater from the Bortnychi Aeration Plant flows into the Dnipro.
But it's been treated.
Yes. What they could disrupt is the treatment process. But 25 years ago there was a major environmental disaster in Kyiv when a sewage pumping station flooded and sewage flowed into the Dnipro. Three kilometres downstream of Kyiv, the water met all the required standards.
Anything is possible. You have to understand: if there's no leakage of accumulated wastewater where there are residential buildings, that's one thing. But if it starts leaking near homes and flooding basements, that's an entirely different matter.
So several districts will be discharging water into the Dnipro.
It will be pumped out and transported elsewhere; work is underway on this. The sewerage system in residential buildings will continue to operate. There aren't going to be pit latrines in the Desnianskyi district. The sewerage system has been designed so that wastewater will be taken away from residential buildings whether there's electricity or not.
So what will cities on the Dnipro downstream of Kyiv do? We'll have solved our sewage problem: we'll just discharge all the untreated wastewater into the river. I can imagine how delighted everyone downstream will be.
Take Kaniv, for example. There's the Kaniv Dam. The water intake is downstream of the dam. Beyond the dam, nothing will reach it. That's the first point.
Secondly, do you remember the incident with the Seim River the year before last? It flows into the Desna. The Russians bombed a chemical plant, and chemicals entered the Seim. People in Kyiv were worried that the pollution would reach the capital. A lot of work was done, and new technological processes were introduced. The pollution didn't reach us.
That's incredible. We dumped megatons of – if you'll excuse my French – shit into the river. Where did it all go?
Nature copes far better than humans do.
In that case, the Environment Ministry ought to be abolished. [The Environment Ministry ceased to exist following a government reorganisation, and its functions are now carried out by the Ministry of Economy and Environment – ed.]
Good point. There are boreholes in Holosiivskyi Park. We've said they need to be restored so that they could be used to supply water to the city if necessary, but the Environment Ministry says it's a park area and they won't let us in.
How much sewage does Kyiv generate per day?
That isn't classified information. Around 680,000-700,000 cubic metres.
So we'll be dumping 700,000 cubic metres into the Dnipro every day.
If there's no electricity, as you suggest, Kyiv won't be taking in more than 200,000 cubic metres of water.
What are the company's weak points? We don't want to give our Russian "friends" any tips on how to attack us, but at the same time, we want to highlight this issue to the authorities and the public.
The company's weak points are its people and the salaries they're paid. Attacks have become more frequent, and the people doing the work are just like you and me. They come to us and say: 'I'm sorry, we're under attack, there are drones and missiles flying around, we're scared, and we're going to quit.' That is their right. We can't work for these salaries.
There was a strike in Lukianivka, and a minibus full of people who were waiting for the market to open burned out in the middle of the road. We have a plumber who travels to work from Chernihiv. He goes straight down into the crater to repair the water main, with the wreckage still lying around. He climbs out of that crater, soaking wet, and says: 'What am I supposed to do? I earn UAH 15,000 (around US$333) [a month], and I pay UAH 10,000 to travel from Chernihiv to Kyiv. I can't survive on 5,000.'"
You're a private company with quite a big chunk of private capital. If I read your interview, I might think: surely this is a matter for the company's owners. Why isn't it?
Because as well as being a private company, we're a licensed operator. We hold a licence for water supply and wastewater services. Under the licensing rules, the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission (NEURC) has a methodology for setting the tariffs. We are also subject to oversight by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine because we are a monopoly in the city.
Your tariff is approved by the NEURC. It includes the wage bill.
The tariff was approved by the city. During martial law, the NEURC has delegated its authority to approve tariffs to the local authorities, but the NEURC checks whether the tariffs have been calculated correctly.
How many years has the tariff remained unchanged?
The tariff for households has been the same for four years.
The relationship between the central government and the city authorities is difficult. The central government informally coordinates and oversees the NEURC. Could Kyivvodokanal be described as a victim of the conflict between the central and city authorities?
No. It's the same situation for anyone who holds a NEURC licence. All of us are suffering. Some water utilities have had assets seized by the tax authorities because of debts they owed to the state budget, but the reason they couldn't repay those debts was because the tariff didn't allow them to.
The president has said that the old electricity tariff needs to be reinstated. I believe it was the same story with the water tariffs being frozen.
Yes, they've been frozen.
Basically, it's a political decision.
The NEURC's decision is political. Obviously, keeping a tariff the same as it was on 24 February 2022 is going to be a purely political decision.
In the past, when an economically unjustified tariff was set, the decision would always state that the difference between the tariffs would be covered by the state or local budgets. A funding source would be specified. For heating companies, this is explicitly provided for.
If you don't have enough money to cover the wage bill, does that mean you don't have enough for repairs?
Of course we don't. The investment programme has been virtually non-existent over the past four years.
No capital works have been carried out for four years, and you're just patching up the holes?
Yes.
A pipe bursts, a crew arrives…
…and they weld it, fit a repair clamp, and bury it.
What safety margin does the company have in terms of its dependence on electricity?
If you're asking how long a water utility can last without an external power supply – well, there won't be any water. If there's no electricity in the city, there won't be any water.
If the attacks continue and temperatures drop to -10°C, there will be no electricity for 20 hours a day. What will happen to the water utility in that case?
There will be water for the four hours when the electricity is on. From a technical point of view it will work like this: when the power goes out, the water utility will stop supplying water but retain water in the network. When the power comes back on, we start the pumps. The water is already sitting in the pipes beneath the buildings, so we pump it through and it starts flowing into the buildings.
So it's a simple formula: if there's electricity, there's water; if there's no electricity, you can forget about water.
But the sewerage system will keep working.
You have close ties with the district heating sector. If electricity is only available for four hours a day, how long will it be before the pipes freeze?
Pipes laid outside buildings will not freeze. The problem occurs where the pipes enter a building. But that's the responsibility of the building management company, the homeowners' association, or the property owners. That's where the problem lies.
Without looking for someone to blame, does having no electricity for 20 hours a day in winter guarantee that the networks will freeze?
Yes.
At what temperature?
At -10°C, there is a very high risk of the system inside a building freezing.
In January and February, we'll be lucky to have electricity for four hours a day, and temperatures are certain to remain below zero. Will all the high-rise apartment blocks freeze?
Yes. The system will collapse, there's no question about that. This is exactly what happened when the water pipes inside buildings froze. Wherever the internal building systems are not working, it will be a disaster.
Is that what [Kyiv Mayor Vitali] Klitschko is talking about when he advises people to leave the city?
Klitschko is more concerned about transport grinding to a halt. We understand that: if there's no electricity, the metro won't run, and that would be disastrous for Kyiv. The railways already have terrible problems. We can see what's happening with electric commuter trains and the Kyiv City Express, the urban railway service.
I'm not asking this to frighten people, but so you can give them some practical guidance. Ordinary Kyiv residents will be reading this, and they need to understand that when temperatures reach a certain level, these are the consequences they can expect.
We can reassure people that the wastewater system will continue to operate.
Kyivvodokanal will do all we can to ensure an uninterrupted water supply. When temperatures drop and there is no electricity, the upper floors of buildings may not have water, because the pumps that boost the water pressure won't be working.
Some homeowners' associations have joined the 70/30 programme and installed inverters and batteries to power their pumps. Residents have approached their building management companies and homeowners' associations and had the water and wastewater systems in their buildings inspected to prevent the kind of system collapse you were talking about. [The 70/30 programme is a Ukrainian municipal initiative where the city budget covers 70% of the cost of energy efficiency measures for apartment buildings, and residents fund the remaining 30%.]
It's essential to insulate water and wastewater systems and basement areas, check that internal systems are working properly, and inspect the points where pipes enter buildings from the street. All of this will significantly reduce the risk of the systems freezing.
To return to the winter scenario, let's look beyond the water utility and hear from you as an experienced technical specialist. The scenario is this: it's freezing outside, there's no electricity and no water. What happens next from the perspective of the heating sector?
From the water utility's perspective, the only risk of freezing is that a pipe inside a building could burst and cause flooding. Last year, this problem only occurred in newly built apartment blocks that hadn't completed the connection procedure in full. It was mainly the hot-water risers that burst, because hot water, due to its physical properties, freezes faster than cold water. If cold water is flowing, it will not freeze. Water risers are usually located somewhere near the centre of a building, in the central service shafts. Heating pipes run along the external walls, so the heating system freezes much faster. The risk to the heating system is greater.
If you live on the ground floor, you'll be the last person to drain water from the system. There will be no water left in the riser above you, so there will be nothing there to freeze. The heating system is different, and the risks are much greater.
How long does it take for a building to freeze, and what does that look like?
Take last year as an example. The whole country helped us out: people used hairdryers and blowtorches to heat the risers and thaw them out. There are some buildings that still haven't been restored.
In Kyiv?
Yes, their heating systems have not been restored. When all the residents are still living in a building, the work can be done more quickly. But in many cases the residents of three or four apartments on a single floor have left Ukraine, and legally it's not possible to enter those properties. We need to at least inspect them to check whether everything is intact, and we may also need to do work there.
If you leave the country, make sure your relatives have access to your home so that someone can go in if necessary.
Before meeting you, we spotted a Mercedes parked by the main entrance. Whose was it?
Well, there are plenty of property developers, and they have plenty of issues that we have to deal with.
Who was it?
A representative of the Kyiv City Military Administration.
Had they come to help?
Not so much to help as to monitor what we are doing in the face of these attacks. It started at 08:00 yesterday and I haven't been home since. We are not finished yet. More problems cropped up this morning.
Is tap water safe to drink?
Now that's a good question. At the point where the building connects to the network, it's perfectly safe. I don't mean the entrance to the building itself, but the point where the building connects to Kyivvodokanal's network. I wouldn't risk drinking the water in a building in Troieshchyna [a residential district in northern Kyiv].
Let me ask you a question in return. When was the last time someone came to your apartment and said, "We are flushing the building's internal water system tomorrow. Please make sure someone is at home, and don't drink the tap water for 12 hours"?
You know what I thought? Why should I do that when the water utility has been unable to repair the pipes for three years?
We follow the regulations we are inspected against.
They could say the same thing: "Under the regulations, all our staff have left and joined the Armed Forces."
No. If the maintenance schedule requires the network near your building to be flushed, it will be flushed, regardless of whether staff are available or not. The procedure is generally carried out at night. A small amount of treatment chemicals is added to the network, the supply is shut off, and any deposits that may have accumulated inside the pipes are flushed out under pressure.
When you said "a small amount of treatment chemicals", you covered your eyes with your hands.
Because this is another sore point. We all talk about European standards of quality. But when we went to the NEURC and said we wanted to switch to higher-quality but more expensive treatment chemicals, they replied, "Have you lost your minds? We will only approve the cheapest chemicals, but your water must still meet the standards." New standards for drinking water quality have been introduced across the country under martial law.
Representatives of the central government will be reading this. What would you say to them?
Don't treat water and wastewater management as low priorities. Without water, there will be no heating. Without water, there will be no electricity. Without wastewater management, there will be no population at all. These are three things that people only think about when the water stops flowing.
Last year, when there was no water at the Cabinet of Ministers, the deputy energy minister came here to tell us what needed to be done in the water supply sector. That was when the message finally got through.
By Dmytro Riasnyi and Mykola Maksymchuk
Translated by Myroslava Zavadska, Anna Kybukevych, and Tetiana Buchkovska
Edited by Teresa Pearce