Drought is coming to Crimea

Pavlo Buranov

Pavlo Buranov

Posted

15.11.2024

Drought is coming to Crimea

By mid-autumn, drinking water reserves in Crimean reservoirs had rapidly passed the symbolic halfway mark and continue to decline. Hydrological experts are not sure how critical the water supply situation will be in the near future, and what to expect next summer and in the next three years.

A month ago, most of the Crimean rivers remained in the “deep autumn low water” mode - either completely dry or no more than ten centimeters deep. Forecasters hoped that the situation might change for the better with the arrival of an anticyclone, which brought the first noticeable precipitation in four months. However, despite the heavy rains, the total volume of the Crimean reservoirs “lost” nine million cubic meters in October and continues to dry rapidly in November.

Propaganda channels reassure people. “We are now at a level below the average, but much higher than the minimum. We can say that we are in a period of transition from an average water period to a low-water period,” says Ilya Nikolenko, head of the Department of Chemical Water Use Technologies.

The expert's optimism is based on the average indicators of water recharge in winter and spring. However, due to global warming, the climate on the peninsula is changing significantly and becoming more arid. Therefore, if something goes wrong in the next six months and the Crimean reservoirs continue to lose water, the water will reach critical levels in June-July. And even if it rains as much as it used to, there will only be enough water for a year. The summer of 2026 is likely to start with a serious water shortage, with the prospect of reaching full exhaustion in August-September.

Moreover, according to experts, this will be only the beginning of the drought.  “In 2025, 2026, 2027, and possibly even in 2028, we can expect a decrease in reservoir inflows and a decrease in precipitation. If the evaporation from the surface of the reservoirs increased several times with the rise in temperature that we had in July, we can no longer expect to have the same amount of water stored due to the increased temperature,” notes hydrologist Anatoliy Kopachevsky.

Ordinary residents of the peninsula are not yet aware of the impending problems. “There is always water in the tap. There are no schedules, no restrictions,” says a resident of a residential area of Simferopol. “So far, there is water. It is enough. Although in the neighboring village, I heard that the horizon is going down. A man ordered a well there, paid a lot of money, and it dried up the next day,” says a local resident of Belogorsk district.

In agriculture, forecasters' predictions are viewed with greater concern. The drought that hit the peninsula four years ago ruined many wineries. In some regions of the peninsula, the grape harvest then fell by half. And it was only one water-scarce year, not three in a row, as is expected in the future. “Now we are choosing between two bad options - to reduce the planting areas of young vineyards and get problems with harvests in the medium term or to risk the harvests of the next three years,” complains an employee of an agricultural enterprise in Bakhchisaray district.

The prospects are no less “bright” in the steppe Crimea, which has long suffered from soil salinization. Negative processes are increasing due to problems with reclamation, which was tied to the operation of the North Crimean Canal. After the destruction of the Kakhovka dam by Russian troops, no realistic solution to the problem is foreseen. This year alone, about four percent of agricultural land that became unusable due to the emergence of salt marshes was taken out of circulation. The scale of salinization will only increase in the future.

Water shortages can also seriously affect tourism, which feeds hundreds of thousands of Crimeans on the coast. Water on schedule for three hours a day and queues for barrels of conditionally potable water are unlikely to increase the number of people willing to spend their vacations in Yalta or Yevpatoriya.

“This summer, the pressure was noticeably lower, because there were a lot of vacationers. So there were no problems with water. Last time, when there was a drought, we had no one at all because there was a quarantine (due to the coronavirus pandemic - ed.), and I don't know how it will work if there is no water again. Probably, few people will want to go,” the owner of a mini-hotel in Sudak shares his expectations.

Hydrological experts believe that there is almost no time to prevent a water crisis. Currently, the entire infrastructure of fresh water storage in Crimea is based on research that is about eighty years old and has long since lost its relevance.

To begin with, a number of studies need to be conducted and a modern model of hydrogeological reserves created, taking into account the regime of rivers, information on seasonal inflows into reservoirs and the potential of rocks as a catchment area. In addition, separate work is needed to understand why the groundwater level that feeds the wells of the peninsula's settlements is declining. All this will take a lot of time and then even more to “reconfigure” the outdated water intake system. But there is almost no time, and the time that remains is rapidly running out... along with the water of the Crimean reservoirs.

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