A Swedish company’s pilot project to modernize the water treatment plant in Zhytomyr could pave the way for the modernization of at least 10 of Ukraine’s deteriorating and underfunded plants.
The project’s realization depends on the
availability of financing in the form of grants, loans, and an increase in
water tariffs.
Nationwide, water and waste
water treatment plants are in urgent need of repairs and modernization, said
Lesya Zorina, a water expert working at the O.N. Marzeyev Institute of Hygiene
and Medical Ecology.
“The technology is more than
70 years old at some of the stations… Of course everything is already beginning
to collapse,” she said.
Problems range from excessive energy
consumption to deteriorating pumps to a lack of automation, said Fedir
Sudnytsyn, former head of social development and communal provisions at the
Kyiv treatment plant.
Swedish Water Experience, the company hoping
to modernize Zhytomyr’s treatment plant, will present
a detailed plan on Aug 24 for the modernization of 25 pumps and the waste water
cleaning facilities, said Per Johansson, the company’s chairman of the board.
The expected result is that the plant will use half the energy it does now and
release cleaner water into the river.
Modernization of the
Zaporozhye treatment plant, financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development, has recently been completed. The bank’s local spokesman, Anton
Usov, said it was the first project of its kind in Ukraine.
One analyst expressed skepticism, however, about pilot
projects leading to modernization of multiple plants. Ildar Gazizullin, a
senior analyst at the International Centre for Policy Studies, said that pilot
projects over the past ten years have not had success in modernizing Ukrainian
treatment plants.
The company’s financing model is based on investing a fraction of the total
cost of the project in energy-efficient technology. The money thus saved
– in addition to money raised through higher tariffs – is used to finance
the rest of the modernization.
In Zhytomyr’s case, an initial investment of about Hr 50 million could
reduce energy consumption by 50 percent in two to three years, saving the plant
Hr 10 to 15 million a year. The saved money – in combination with money raised
through higher tariffs – would then be used to finance the rest of the
approximately Hr 500 million project, Johansson said.
The initial funds will come from a Swedish government
grant and a loan from a European environmentally-focused finance corporation,
according to the press service of the Ukrainian ministry of regional
development and construction.
Higher tariffs are an essential component of the
project’s financing, Johansson said, claiming it would be impossible to find
investors without a guarantee that the tariffs will be raised.
Water tariffs currently cover about 70 percent of the cost of maintenance
and operation of the plant, a situation common in most treatment plants in
Ukraine.
Water and waste water treatment plants across the country are losing money
and need resources that the government does not have, Valerij Saratov, head of
the commission that sets water tariffs in all cities with populations greater
than 100,000, told Ukrinform. Raising tariffs to economically justified levels
was a question of the “physical survival” of the plants, he said.
Saratov told RBK-Ukraina in May that he thinks water tariffs in Ukraine will
be raised to economically justified levels this year. That is unlikely to
happen before the parliamentary elections in October, said Valeriy Filippov,
director of the Zhytomyr plant.
People without the financial means to pay for water get financial
assistance from the federal government, and increases in tariffs will be
accompanied by more assistance, Saratov said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Fedor Zarkhin can be reached at
[email protected].
