Rebuilding Ukraine’s ruined Nova Kakhovka dam pits history against economic reality

Amid the spoiled farmland and destroyed crops, the waterlogged homes and ruined lives, the now slow-motion tragedy that is the draining of the Kakhovka reservoir is also peeling back time on an almost forgotten aspect of Ukrainian history.

The receding water has revealed the remains of an ancient settlement that people living nearby on the edge of the artificial lake refer to as the "Cossack Meadow."

Andriy Seletskiy, the mayor of Novovorontsovka — a town along the Dnipro River, about 97 kilometres upstream from the ruined Nova Kakhovka dam — considers the draining of the reservoir a milestone event and an opportunity for the government in Kyiv to consider.

"In the Kakhovka reservoir, we have more than 2,000 archeological and historical objects," Seletskiy told CBC News in an interview this week.

The discovery sets up a conundrum for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government. It has staked much of its political brand and the county's existence on preserving and strengthening Ukrainian culture and identity, including its history, which he has accused Russia of trying to erase with Moscow's campaign of bombing libraries and cultural centres.

Rebuilding dam expected to take years

The desire to preserve the sites will have to be balanced against the urgent social and economic need to eventually rebuild the dam.

The Soviet-era generating station is an important source of power for southern Ukraine. It is also the source of clean drinking water for 700,000 people, according to the United Nations, and is the lifeblood for farmers in the region who depend on it to irrigate their crops.

"For Ukraine, we don't need [such a] big reservoir. We need water. We need places for agriculture, but we need our historical memory, too," said Seletskiy, who majored in history.

When the dam was constructed during the 1950s, he said, it was meant to serve the wider Soviet Union, and the communist government cared little about preserving Ukrainian history.

"They just flooded these memories of ancient times and didn't even take a picture of it," Seletskiy said.

The "meadow" — with its mix of undulating hills, grassland and forests — had been a safe haven for Cossacks for centuries before it was flooded.

Semi-nomadic and semi-militarized, the Cossacks have a long, rich — some would argue romanticized — place in history as a multi-ethnic, democratic people who were given a great deal of autonomy under Polish, Lithuanian and Russian rulers. They were hired as irregular troops and developed a fierce reputation.

A senior official in Zelenskyy's office said on Wednesday that the Ukrainian government intends to rebuild the shattered dam, but it will take years.

Rostyslav Shurma told local media that reconstruction will take place after the war — which began in February 2022, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine — is concluded.

"Kakhovka HPP is a hydroelectric power plant that was an important element of the energy system," Shurma told an online publication, noting how Russia's air and missile campaign has led to repeated blows to Ukraine's energy network.

Seletskiy said he recognized that the odds of convincing the Ukrainian government to preserve the Cossack settlements were not stacked in his favour.

"I understand that economics [is] higher than historical memory," he said. "It's sad, but I understand this."

Communities along Dnipro River struggle

Those affected most by the loss of the dam have little time for historical memories.

South of Novovorontsovka in the hard-hit city of Mykolaiv, people line up daily on a street corner with jugs and plastic barrels as blue city buses, fitted with a giant plastic bladder, dispense clean water. Early in the war, Russian bombing destroyed the water filtration system.

The destruction of the dam has only made the situation more miserable.

"Please tell this to the world," Larysa Dorhalis, a resident visiting one of the corner distribution sites, told CBC News. "Tell them what is happening here in Ukraine."

At the nearby train station in Mykolaiv, Alina Stasko has even less time to think about the past. She was driven by flooding from her home in a suburb of Kherson.

Her escape from the rising waters with her husband and their two friends, along with their cats, was made over a railway bridge as Russian forces on the opposite bank took shots at them.

"We were walking and heard the whistle [of the shell and] we fell into bushes, then boom," Stasko said. "And this misfortune was not only once…. They were bombarding heavily."

With the assistance of volunteers, she and her family were shuttled to a boarding school on the outskirts of Mykolaiv that was converted into a centre for the internally displaced.

There, amid the linoleum-tiled dormitories, she settled into Room No. 35 for sleep and an uncertain fate.

In the village of Hrushivka, northwest of Mykolaiv, Denys Myronenko also wonders about his fate. He owns a farm that grows strawberries and grapes, and depends on the water from the reservoir.

"If we irrigate with only what nature gives us, it will not grow," he told CBC News on a rainy day this week. "Because now there's cool weather and rain here, but in the summer the climate is very dry, it's very hot, and so [the harvest] won't even be here at all."

He said the word in the local business community was that "once the Russians were kicked out," there was a plan to at least temporarily block the river and restore the reservoir.

"For now, while they [the Russians] are here — 20 kilometres away from us — the government doesn't want to do this because obviously they might be shelling and there will be casualties," Myronenko said. "We really love this water reservoir. It gives life. We all depend on this water."

WATCH | Kherson residents clean up after Kakhovka dam breach:

Kherson residents measure flood damage, clean up following Kakhovka dam breach

3 days ago

Duration 3:15

The war-weary Ukrainian city of Kherson is still dealing with massive flooding and damage more than a week after an important dam collapsed. CBC News has a team on the ground who spoke with those struggling to pick up the pieces.

Energoatom, Ukraine's state-owned nuclear power company, warned this week that all electricity consumers in the country will pay higher bills with the destruction of the hydroelectric plant at Nova Kakhovka.

The nearby Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian occupation, depends on water from the reservoir.

Energoatom president Petro Kotin said it's working on alternate sources of water, but the absence of the hydro station, which was used to balance and compensate at times when the energy grid was under attack, will be keenly felt.