Only UAH 300,000 of the 7.4 mn needed to reconstruct the dam at the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station (Dniprohes) in Zaporizhzhia were allocated due to the shortage of funds. Seeing as the city authorities are not counting on an increase in funding, the dam is said closed to traffic March next year. As a result, the city of nearly 1 mn inhabitants will be split into the left and right banks of the Dnipro

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Yevhen Kartashov,
Zaporizhzhia Mayor

Whatever the situation may be, sooner or later we will have to close the dam completely for major repairs. We captured the attention of the government after the accident at the Sayano-Shushenska HES and gradually began receiving funds for repairs. The fact is that chunks of concrete were literally falling off in certain sections of the dam. This is the reason we must speed up the construction of new bridges in the city to open up new transport routes for vehicles. Concerning the Preobrazhenskiy bridges, their operating life came to an end eons ago. So, as soon as we finish the construction of new bridges across the Dnipro the old bridges will be closed to regular traffic and will be used only as railway and pedestrian bridges. Admittedly, we did not receive money for their temporary repair.

To be closed next March
Dniprohes was built back in the 1930s. Since then it has been destroyed and rebuilt, repaired and completed. The impressing construction of hydroelectric power station which also is a kilometre-long bridge appear, it seemed, will stay for centuries. However, experts have recently shocked the town: the dam can fail any moment. The situation seems even more disastrous because two other city bridges are reported totally worn out, so the city of almost a million inhabitants can at any moment now be split into two disconnected parts – on the left and the right banks of the river.
Over the recent years, many experts and fortune-tellers have repeatedly warned that the dam’s days are numbered and the catastrophe is inevitable. Local residents developed immunity to such prophecies long ago. The fact is that the city’s residents never doubted the impenetrability of the dam’s 60-meter high wall that looms over most of the city. Nonetheless, not too long ago employees of the Ministry of Emergencies began studying into the nearest future of the Dniprohes dam.
 “From the very outset, two notions had to be divided: there is a concrete structure that is considered the body of the dam and the metal highway that was built on top of the dam and paved with asphalt for local traffic. The metal section and the road surface of the dam are in grave emergency condition. In accordance with the GOST state standard, the road was classified as unfit for traffic in May 2009. Immediately after that we sounded the alarm bells and appealed to the government for assistance,” Assistant Director of State Department of the Emergencies Ministry Yevhen Solovyov told Weekly.ua.
After the lengthy talks, the Cabinet allocated UAH 7.4 mn this summer for cosmetic repairs of the dam. This should be sufficient to prevent it from collapsing. We have received, however, only
UAH 300,000 of the promised sum.
“A total of UAH 31.3 mn is needed for the reconstruction of the dam with the lion’s share of that amount to be spent for reinforcing the concrete section of the dam,” says Solovyov. “I am convinced that the dam will not break and the city will not be hit by a 60-meter wave of water. However, the threat of the road on the dam collapsing is entirely real.”

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What happens if the levee breaks?
The summer of 1941 could serve
as an example of what will happen if the dam bursts. That summer NKVD sappers blew up a part of the Dniprohes and a 10-meter wave of water rushed downstream. It washed away German ferries, two retreating Soviet armies and a cavalry unit. The wave hit the riverside of the Zaporizhzhyan steppe and washed away columns of refugees. Witnesses said hundreds of workers died on flooded lands and riverside territories.
Within an hour the lower part of the city, where storehouses with massive reserves of industrial equipment, military supplies and hundreds of thousands tons of foodstuffs, was completely flooded. The downriver cities of Nikopol (approximately 70 km from Zaporizhzhya) and Tokmak (around 100 km from Zaporizhzhya) were flooded. Such were the consequences of a partial blow up of the dam.

Chief of the City Emergencies and Civil Protection Department Serhiy Dronov is less optimistic. He told Weekly.ua that many experts were shocked by the state of the dam’s metal and concrete foundation.
“The internal steel overlappings, beams and bearings are covered with rust and full of cracks,” says Dronov. “Because of the deformed seams and the water drainage system, the concrete is covered with water. When it dries the concrete falls off the constructions in huge chunks,” Dronov added.
As a result, the emergencies ministry announced that if the repair work is not completed by spring, they will close the road without any hesitation in early March.
Left bank, right bank
Upon hearing this, city residents began talking about the possible collapse of the two bridges named after their designer Preobrazhenskiy, which connect the city’s Khortytsya bedroom district with the rest of the city through the Khortytsya Island on the right bank.
The fact is that the amount of transport crossing the dam on a daily basis is six times higher than the nameplate throughput capacity. In order to unload the Dniprohes, which is in a state of emergency, local traffic must be redirected to the Preobrazhenskiy bridges. As it turns out, however, this will be the beginning of the end of transport connection between the two banks of the city.
“Both Preobrazhenskiy bridges were built back in 1954 and have never undergone repairs since,” said Solovyov. “If we close the dam the residents of the right bank will not be able to make a detour over the Preobrazhenskiy bridges, as their technical condition will not support such a load.”
Indeed, even two buses have a hard time passing one another on the high and narrow bridges. Moreover, this is the only way to the city’s center for 120,000 residents of the Khortytsya bedroom community. Due to everlasting traffic bottlenecks, apartments in this district sell cheap. Meanwhile, local taxi drivers demand hundreds of hryvnia for an 8-kilometer trip to Baburka (the local nickname for the Khortytsya district). In addition, it is impossible to close the bridges for repair even for an hour, because tens thousands of people will be cut off from the so-called “big land”. There isn’t even an ambulance station in Baburka. This is why residents of Zaporizhzhia are not surprised by the number of deaths in ambulances stuck in traffic on the bridges.
Two new bridges have been under construction for the five years now. However, due to the lack of funds in the national budget, the projects are underfinanced. As a result, construction has been practically frozen.
Now, when it is becoming simply dangerous to postpone the completion of construction and opening of new bridges over the Dnipro River, the city authorities hope that the government will finally pay attention to transport and the man-made problems that Zaporizhzhia faces. By the way, the city’s residents understand that in best case scenario the government will finally will allocate money to repair the dam. At least, one less problem to deal with.

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The Dniprohes is the largest hydroelectric power station in Ukraine and was the largest in Europe when it was built. The decision to build the station was signed by Vladimir Lenin on August 10, 1921. On May 1, 1932, the Dniprohes was commissioned. On August 18, 1941, the dam was blown up by the Soviet army.
The station was reconstructed and re-commissioned in 1950. At that time, the Dniprohes was a part of the United Power System of the European part of the USSR and supplied electricity to industrial complexes in the Prydniprovya, Donbas and Kryviy Rih regions.
The road on the dam was reconstructed in 1978 and widened to four lanes, two going in opposing directions. The operating life of this section of the dam expired in 1998. The dam is 760 meters long and 60 meters high. The operating life of the dam is 100 years.