PROFESSOR V.A. DUKHOVNY, EECCA NWO EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HAS MET WITH AUTHORITY OF WATER MANAGEMENT IN UKRAINE
Prof. Dukhovny V.A. has visited the State Agency on Water Resources of Ukraine on 25-26 May 2011, and has met with D-r Stashuk V.A., Chairman of that agency. He spoke to the personnel of the Agency.
The Agency carries out extensive work on water development in Ukraine, implementing water management and water relations, exploitation of public water systems and channels, including such unique objects as the North Crimean canal, Kakhovskaya irrigation system, the channel Seversky Donetsk-Donbass canal and others. The Agency has 255 enterprises with 32,000 people, including 9 basin's departments on water resources management and 16 regional ones, 21 regional department of Irrigation and Water Management, 25 hydrogeological expedition, 5 irrigation institutions, etc.
Ukraine has 88 billion m3 of water in the average water year, of which their own national resources equal to 52 km3. The rivers of Ukraine are the Dnieper, Dniester, Southern Bug, the Northern Donets, Vistula, Danube and others 1137 reservoirs were constructed with a total volume of 55 billion m3 of water.
The Agency's structure consists of 39 water measuring laboratories on 495 river stations, where the regular monitoring of water quality is being carried out.
The Ukrainian government approved a national program of water sector development, which is based on IWRM principles and includes a number of sub-programs:
a) supporting development of land reclamation
In accordance with other sub-programs all the lost irrigated land of 2,2 million hectares (now 1.2 million hectares are irrigated) and the drained land of 3.3 million ha must be recovered to 2015. Currently, the country is implementing the land reconstruction, which will allow individual owners to have up to 10,000 hectares in the rental property. In this connection drip irrigation now is rapidly developing and has reached 54 thousand hectares. The state pays in addition approximately half the cost by a special 1% tax on the sale of alcoholic beverages used in the form of a special fund for development of land reclamation and sponsorships for drip irrigation;
b) Providing of centralized water supply for rural areas
This sub-program is directed to 1323 rural communities where imported water is used especially in Lutskaya region and some western regions. The sub-program on construction of water conduits, headworks and treatment facilities is developed. The Government actively attract donors and contribute own finance to implement these sub-programs.
c) protection of rural settlements and agricultural lands from the water damage.
Annually over 10 km of new dams are being constructed, 15-20 km of banks are being stabilized, more than 150 miles of river channels are being cleaned, tens of thousands of agricultural lands are protected within this subprogram.
d). Integrated flood protection in the river basins: Dniester, Prut, Siret and Tisza.
There will be 2020 km of dams, 484 km of the stabilized banks, 1285 km of the regulated river channels within this program. A special place in this work is given to creation of an automated information-measuring system "Tisza", which is aimed at operational forecasting (in conjunction with Hungarian experts) of flood hydrographs of the rivers, the preparation and dissemination of flood protection information to all interested organizations. The system includes a radio relay link between Uzhgorod (Ukraine) and Neredgaza (Hungary), which provides two channels of direct information, a digital radio link for communication with the automatic measuring stations, the control panel is set in Uzhgorod, a system of automated collection of hydrological and meteorological data.
One of the main activities of the Agency is to cooperate with neighboring countries on transboundary rivers: with Russia (since 1992) and Slovakia (from 1994) and Moldova (1994) and Poland (since 1996), Romania (1997), Hungary (since 1997) and Belarus (since 2001).
Agency has established a wonderful training center and a museum of Water Management at the Bortnichesky department of irrigation systems management, where the history of water management and land reclamation in Ukraine since the end of the XIX century is presented.
At the end of the meeting Professor Dukhovny was awarded the Honorary Diploma and the Honorary Badge of Water Management of Ukraine.
PARTICIPATING PROF. V.A. DUKHOVNY, MEMBER OF THE WWC BOARD AND EECCA NWO EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, IN THE SIMPOSIUM "CLEAN WATER OF RUSSIA"
XI International Scientific and Practical Simposium "Clean Water of Russia" organized by the Federal Agency on Water Resources of Russia, Russian Institute of Water Management jointly with Administration of Sverdlovsky region was held on 18-20 May 2011.
The event was opened with the exhibition "Clean Water of Russia ", where numerous exhibits showing the work of companies in Russia towards the improvement of water supply and water conservation in the Russian Federation were presented.
At the opening ceremony of the symposium Prof Dukhovny V.A., the WWC's board member, welcomed the participants of the symposium with popular expression of Mr. Loic Fauschon, the WWC's President: "The time of easy water passed! Now we need to fight for the opportunity to the economical water use and the water sources' quality from which we eat". It is nice that in light of the 6 WWF's direction - "Time for Action" - at the exhibition and symposium ways to improve water management in Russia, its utilities - as the main suppliers of water to the population of the country - are shown and discussed . It is needed to stress not only the importance of capital investments to water and sanitation, but also the creation of new organizational forms of water management as public and public-private organizations, which involve water users into the water use management.
The draft "Charter of the global water security", recommended by the Tashkent Regional Conference for the submission to 6VVF was presented to participants. The Draft was met with approval and understanding that particular ethics and rationality, which has been always promoted by the traditions of the people and all the spiritual leaders of our nations, should be with respect to water.
Mr. Bart Fokkens, Member of the Preparatory European Campaign to 6VVF, told the participants about the activity of WWC and its commissions on preparatory process to the Forum.
There were three sections: "Management, use and protection of water resources in dry years", "Water supply - New water treatment technologies", "Industrial water supply and wastewater treatment" at the symposium.
The meetings were attended by the heads and deputy heads of the Russian river basin water management organizations, as well as by a number of prominent Russian scientists. The great attention was given to the following reports: "Water shortage and its impact on water use security" (Prof. Alekseevsky N.I., Moscow State University), "Planning the water management measures in the basin and problems of water management programs development" (Mr. Merzlikitsky Yu.B., Head of department of RosNIIVH), "Conceptual bases of planning water management measures in the EECCA countries" (Prof. Dukhovny V.A., SIC ICWC, Uzbekistan), and others.
The Water Supply Session has approved preparation of the Russian Federation Law "About water supply and sanitation", which provides creation of the unified regulations governing all aspects of the branch's activity. It includes a mechanism for optimizing the tariff regulation, promotion of inward investment through a public-private partnerships and concession agreements, and implementation of effluent discharge standards for water bodies with applying the "polluter pays" principle.
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