You're reading: Pumping deep for a cool drink

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a four-part series on the safety of drinking water in Kyiv. First article about the quality of tap water can be found here.

After a reactor at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986, dozens of new water pumps were built in Kyiv to provide the capital with clean drinking water from aquifers.

Kyiv Post tests show that the water from the pumps is still among the cleanest available – certainly better than tap water.

There are around 200 pumps in Kyiv, although half of them currently aren’t working.

“Pump water is the best,” believes Viacheslav Prokopov, professor at Marzeyev Institute of Hygiene and Medical Ecology.

He said that Kyiv pumps bring water from more than 200 meters underground. Water at such depth is more protected from chemical and microbiological contamination. “It is natural good quality water that doesn’t require any further chemical purification,” he said. “It is cleaned merely by a mechanical filter and delivered directly to the consumers’ containers.”

On March 28, the Kyiv Post ordered independent tests of three Kyiv pumps located in Shevchenko Park in the city center, at 20 Gongadze Prospekt on the right bank and at 12 Boichenko Street on the left bank.

A microbiological test, conducted by the Sanitary Microbiology Laboratory of the Marzeyev Institute of Hygiene and Medical Ecology, revealed that the water in those pumps was free from any harmful bacteria and microbes, while the chemical one carried out by the Ion Exchange and Adsorption Laboratory of National Technical University of Ukraine proved this water is safe and physiologically sound.

It’s not all good news, however.

“Hydrogen sulfide is a waste product of bacteria. There’s nothing good about it,” said Kostiantyn Zagorodniuk, an assistant professor at the Bogomolets National Medical University.

The results also show an amount of iron in the sample collected from the pump at Taras Shevchenko Park, which is three times over the recommended limit. Some scientists say iron is not dangerous for human health. They say it just gives water a yellow-brown color and unpleasant flavor, which, as with hydrogen sulfide, reduces its attractiveness for consumers. But Anna Tsvetkova, water and sanitation program coordinator at MAMA-86, said there are other negative effects of excessive iron in the water.

“Regular use of water with excess of iron may cause allergic reactions, blood diseases, hypertonic disease and premature skin aging,” she said, adding that iron also accumulates in the liver and may break down liver cells.

The Kyiv Post showed its findings to all institutions responsible for the city pumps.

The Kyiv Sanitary-Epidemiological Service, which oversees the quality of drinking water, told the Kyiv Post that it would not talk about the newspaper’s findings because the sampling was not conducted by its specialists. The accuracy of Kyiv Post’s collection of samples can be viewed on the following video.

Watch the video how Kyiv Post collected water samples from Kyiv pumps and wells here.

Kyivvodokanal, the city water utility responsible for production control at the pumps, replied they are in charge of the technical condition of the pumps, but not the water quality.

Kyivvodfond, a newly founded municipal utility company that is responsible for 184 out of 204 Kyiv pumps since the beginning of this year, responded that violations of water quality in the pump in Shevchenko Park were successfully solved earlier this spring. After the Kyiv Post inquiry, Kyivvodfond checked the pump again and closed it down for several days to wash it out and fix filters.

The Kyiv Post organized a second test on May 24, which confirmed that the levels of iron were reduced from 0.75 milligrams to 0.04 milligram per cubic decimeter, which is safe and far below the legal limit.

At the same time, the strong smell of hydrogen sulfide still remained in the water withdrawn from the Shevchenko Park pump.

Officials at Kyivvodfond said the problem of excessive levels of hydrogen sulfide in pumps can be solved with the help of additional filters, but did not explain why they did not install it where needed.

Experts at Ecosoft, a producer of water treatment facilities and technologies, say it would cost $150-$170 per pump to buy a filter that removes hydrogen sulfide. It would cost an additional $280 per year to change cartridges and service the filter. The total of $450 looks like an affordable amount of money considering that the 2012 city budget allocated $1 million for 184 Kyiv pumps, or some $5,500 for each pump.

But city authorities chose another way to solve the problem.

Oleksandr Popov, head of the Kyiv city administration, signed a memorandum of intent with potential investors. The deal is worth $3.3 million and includes additional purification of water from Kyiv pumps and selling water for 50 kopeks per liter. City officials assure that citizens will have a choice to buy additionally purified water or to take water directly from the pumps for free.

Fedir Sudnitsyn, a former employee at Kyivvodokanal, is skeptical about this idea. He said it’s a good idea to additionally purify the water. On the other hand, a huge amount of taxpayers’ money was invested in the early 1990s through early 2000s to build those pumps and now someone will capitalize on that public property.

“As always happened in our country, good initiatives end up with a bad result,” said Sudnitsyn. “New pumps won’t be built. All pumps finally will become private. And, the price for water will be so high that citizens won’t be happy with it.”

Currently, the list of non-working pumps can be found at www.vodokanal.kiev.ua and a map of Kyiv pumps can be seen here.

Another popular source of water – particularly on religious holidays – is holy water from wells near churches and monasteries.

The Kyiv Post checked two of the most popular wells out of dozens in the capital.

The water test of a sample taken from St. Anthony’s well at the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves showed that the water there is good and complies with all requirements of current legislation. It is comparable to water from pumps but it does not have the unpleasant smell of hydrogen sulfide.

A sample withdrawn from the well near Vydubytsky Monastery revealed worse results. The water there also matches current legal standards, which are not so strict for water in wells, but in fact its total hardness is almost twice higher than in the pumps and in the taps tested.

“It’s an overwhelming hardness,” said Natalia Makarova, deputy head of the laboratory at National Technical University, which conducted the tests. “The residue on the bottom of the teapot after boiling this water in it will be so high that the teapot will have to be cleaned every second day.”

Tsvetkova said that drinking water with high hardness from pumps and wells is not good for babies and poses a risk for people with salt metabolism problems.

Priest Vasyl at Vydubutsky monastery said that the last check of the water in the well showed that the water is safe and that up to 1,000 people drink it every day.

Despite the disadvantages, water in pumps and wells do not contain chlorine, which can react with other organic substances to produce byproducts with a carcinogenic effect. Drinking at least one cup of water from pumps or wells per day is good for one’s health, experts say.

All experts stress, however, that water from pumps and wells should be taken only in clean bottles and stored in a place protected from sunlight, and no longer than 24 hours. Otherwise various bacteria start breeding in the bottle and the water becomes unsafe for drinking.

(An official document with chemical test results of the water from Kyiv pumps and wells can be seen here, and microbiological test results can be found here.)

Kyiv Post staff writers Oksana Faryna can be reached at [email protected], and Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected].

This project was funded by SCOOP, an international network of investigative journalists that receives funding from the Danish government. More information is available at
i-scoop.org
.

Read also:

Part 1: What’s In Your Water? (May 25)

Part 3: Bottled Water: Which Is Best? (June 1)

Part 4: Which water to drink (July 20)