Ecologists warned about the consequences of dam destruction on the Kuma.

The prosecutor's office revealed damage to two dams on the Kuma River in the village of Levokumka, and the court ordered their repair. The breach of the dams could lead to flooding of agricultural land and housing, as well as worsen water quality, specialists indicated.

The court ordered the construction control department to repair the damage to the two dams on the Kuma River in the village of Levokumka in the Mineral Waters district, identified by the environmental prosecutor's office. According to the agency's conclusions, the two dams are being operated improperly and have damage; the bank protection slopes are overgrown with trees and shrubs, and signs indicating the stormwater pipes and the length of the structures are missing.

According to the prosecutor's assessment, the identified violations pose a threat of dam destruction and worsen the environmental situation. The court's decision on the supervisory agency's lawsuit became known on October 27.

Possible consequences of dam breaches

The coordinator of the industrial greening program at the Wildlife Protection Center Igor Shkradyuk told the "Caucasian Knot" that this concerns not dams blocking the river, but embankments along the river. They were built to prevent floods from interfering with the use of adjacent lands for agriculture and residential development.

"Accordingly, if this dam is breached, the valley of the river will be flooded, including agricultural land, fields, and housing, with all the consequences of flooding: crop loss, huge damage to households," Shkradyuk said. He compared the situation to the valleys of the Chinese rivers Huanghe and Yangtze.

According to the ecologist, the prosecutor's office is right. "The river, the water body, is federally owned. Accordingly, if there is no special decision regarding a specific dam, the issue of the safety of the water body is also under federal jurisdiction. The dam needs to be reinforced at the expense of the federal budget," he believes.

The dams along the Kuma are earthen, covered with concrete slabs on top, Shkradyuk reported. "That is, they are built as close to the river as possible to take as much land from the river as possible. If rebuilt, it would require piling up a lot of earth next to them and covering it with concrete. But at this moment, it is cheaper to repair what exists," he explained.

In the event of a dam breach, according to Shkradyuk, problems with wastewater and contamination of water with chemical waste may worsen. "If the water breaches the dam, it will flood everything, including warehouses of mineral fertilizers, which will dissolve in the water and enter the river," he said.

Pollution of rivers and drinking water

Stavropol eco-activist, head of the waste distribution development center "Three R Center" Pavel Bogdanov considers the discharge of sewage into the region's rivers a serious problem. In the event of dam breaches, this will worsen the ecological situation.

"Currently, all the rivers in the region are polluted because there is illegal sewage discharge by citizens, and there are many littered dump sites along the riverbeds, as these are often untouched areas where unscrupulous people set up dumps," Bogdanov said.

He also pointed out the danger of chemical waste entering the water. "Of course, in water protection zones where agriculture is conducted, there is a possibility of rivers being contaminated with mineral fertilizers. Overall, improper operation can lead to soil erosion. And in general, there is a problem with the pollution of our water resources, especially in urban areas," the eco-activist explained.

Ecologist Evgeny Vitishko sees a danger to the purity of drinking water in the uncontrolled overflow of the river in the event of dam breaches. "If the water supply there is like in the Krasnodar region, as on most rivers along the Black Sea coast, produced by subsurface water intake, then everything that washes off the fields will end up in drinking water to some extent," he said. According to him, water intake laboratories are not equipped to detect such substances, so pollution may go unnoticed.

The problem of dam wear

According to Vitishko, most dams along the rivers have exceeded their service life. "The service life of dams is about 50 years, but most of our hydraulic structures of this kind serve for much longer periods. In addition, they have a limit on the pressure of water they can withstand," he said.

If only gaps are patched, this will lead to catastrophic consequences in the future, the ecologist believes. As an example, he cited the accident at the Fedorovsky hydro junction in the Krasnodar region in 2022.

"Fortunately, there were no casualties. But there were consequences for agriculture. The accident led to a 30% drop in rice harvest, as this hydraulic system was used for rice planting," Vitishko said.

In March, the environmental prosecutor's office revealed the discharge of untreated wastewater into the Kuma in the Mineral Waters district, exceeding limits for iron, sulfates, ammonia, and nitrites. "One of the branches of the State Unitary Enterprise of the Stavropol Territory 'Stavropolkrayvodokanal' in the Mineral Waters district allowed the discharge of untreated wastewater into the Kuma River," the regional prosecutor's office reported on its website.