Tens of thousands of Moldovans have been left without water after a Russian strike on a hydroelectric plant in Ukraine resulted in oil polluting a major river that flows through both countries.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu has blamed Russia for the pollution on the Dniester River following an attack on Ukraine’s Novodnistrovsk hydropower plant on March 7, saying it is “threatening Moldova’s water supply.”
The Ukrainian plant is about 15km upstream from Moldova’s northern border with Ukraine and supplies water to about 80 percent of Moldova’s population of about 2.5 million people.
Photo: AP
Moscow has repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, such as dams and river ports, since it fully invaded the country in 2022.
“Russia bears full responsibility,” Sandu wrote on X on Sunday.
The Moldovan Ministry of the Environment on Sunday declared an environmental state of alert for 15 days, giving the authorities a legal mechanism to boost technical interventions and impose temporary restrictions on water supplies.
“We are taking this decision to make sure we prevent any risk to the population’s health because of the continuous wave of pollution with oil products, the risk of the pollution spreading, and the exceedance of contaminant levels in the northern area of the Dniester River,” the ministry said.
While oil pollutants have been confirmed in the river following the strike, the exact source of the pollutant is not yet clear.
The situation has forced the authorities to cut the water supply to several districts, including Moldova’s second-largest city of Balti, which has a population of about 90,000 people.
As well as humanitarian aid from Romania, Moldova’s military stepped in this week to distribute drinking water in the northern city from a 10-tonne tanker.
“It’s very hard, very hard,” said 84-year-old Balti resident Liuba Istrati, who has been carrying buckets of water up to her apartment. “We live on the fifth floor, it’s just the two of us, old people, my husband is sick in bed.”
The water shortage has also forced some schools to close and move learning online.
“It’s a complicated situation, I have to come every day to get water,” said Irina Mutluc, a teacher living in Balti. “Even for one person you need quite an amount of water to consume, for the bathroom and so on, so it’s really complicated.”
The authorities are racing to clean up pollution, and analyze and monitor the river water.
Romania, which has close relations with Moldova, has dispatched teams and equipment, such as absorbent materials for dams, to aid cleanup efforts.
“The latest samples taken show an improvement in the water indicators, which confirms the effectiveness of the filters and barriers for the capture and disposal of pollutants,” the ministry said on Wednesday.
Authorities are “working at an accelerated pace” to resume water supplies, “but this decision will be made exclusively on the basis of at least two consecutive sets of analyses, taken on two different days... Protecting the health of citizens remains the absolute priority,” it added.
Moldovan Minister of the Environment Gheorghe Hajder on Wednesday told a news conference that for the first time since the crisis began, three critical monitoring points on the river “reached the admissible limit” of oil pollution.
If the analyses show the same results or improve in the next 48 hours, authorities would consider reopening a pumping station on the northeastern border with Ukraine, which supplies several districts and Balti, Hajder said.
“It is clear evidence that upstream oil diversions have been greatly mitigated, and the absorbing dams have had their effect,” he said.
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