The earliest terrorist act with the intention to flood a city goes back to the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. In 1209, in order to put a quicker end to the siege on Yinchuan, the capital of the Western Xia dynasty (now in north-west China), Genghis Khan set out with his troops to divert a branch of the Huang He, the Yellow River. The makeshift dam broke and the ploy backfired. It was Genghis Khan’s camp that was flooded.
Will we ever know which of Genghis Khan’s imitators is the one whose enraged act has caused major floods downstream of the Kakhovka dam that further pollute the river, whose headwaters have already suffered from fallout from Chernobyl, radiotoxic inputs from its Pripyat tributary and wastewater from Kiev, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia?
Photo by Kostiantyn and Vlada Liberov
The collapse of the Kakhovka run-of-the-river dam did not cause a wave that destroyed everything in its path.
It was not a wave, it was a breaking wave 10 km wide, 3 to 7 meters high, moving at 50 km/h, which in 1975 after the collapse of the Banqiao dam on the Ru river, a tributary of the Huai He river, killed an estimated 160,000 to 230,000 people in Henan province, China (see the report “Déchets post-catastrophe : risques sanitaires et environnementaux” (Post-disaster waste: health and environmental risks) written in 2007 by Robin des Bois, chapter IX “Le risque technologique barrage” (The technological risk of dam) (only in French)).
However, the human toll of this act of war will be heavy when the houses in and around Kherson whose roofs are now all that can be seen will be accessible to rescuers. It is likely that many victims will be found, primarily isolated widows, disconnected and viscerally attached to their homes, their memories, and their cats and other pets.
The overall environmental impact will only be known after several years of scientific and naturalist studies in the lower reaches of the Dnieper and in the Dnieper-South Bug estuary. The Dnieper-South Bug estuary is connected to the Black Sea. It is the location of the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve and the Ivory Coast of Sviatoslav National Nature Park. The fish of the Dnieper-South Bug estuary may be spared immediate mortality, but they will certainly be contaminated by the discharge of sludge and turbid, toxic water into their habitat. A cocktail of hydrocarbons, fertilizers, pesticides and ammunition poisons will seep into the food chain of the estuary and the Black Sea. Fish-eating mammals and birds will also be poisoned by the consequences of the collapse of the Kakhovka dam. Generations of otters and white-tailed eagles will suffer. The estuary will also be polluted by some of the macro-waste dispersed in submerged roadways. The dispersion of this waste will contribute to the degradation of coastal waters and wetlands. In a few years’ time, if the war is brought to an end, scientists and NGOs will find polystyrene and plastic chips in the storks’ stomachs, in the pelicans’ throat pouches and in the emblematic sturgeons.
In the very short term, Ukraine urgently needs massive material assistance, including watertight skips, to sort out toxic and “soft” waste such as sofas, mattresses and textiles, which will be invaded by mold and risk triggering respiratory problems.
If peaceful international assistance is not deployed, particularly in the city and port of Kherson, residents will be reduced to open-air burning, which will exacerbate the pollution of air and water resources.
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