Water companies in Ukraine are under the responsibility of the Municipality and can be regarded as integrated water utilities as they are responsible for production of drinking water and collection and processing of waste water. There are approx. 178 cities in Ukraine and it is estimated that 2/3 of them actually operate facilities for treatment of wastewater. Today, Ukraine is a country that builds its future management and strategy following the European model where it seeks to implement European technologies. Currently, the majority of municipal services are in poor condition, with up to 90% in bad shape, with treatment efficiency very low, energy consumption high, management inadequate due to structure of constructions and old technologies not effective. The management and quality of surface waters, including the large rivers of Ukraine, is under the responsibility of State agency of water resources of Ukraine. State of the Waste Water Treatment Plants Presently - in most of the sewage treatment installations – the performance is below the European standards. This means, for example:• Bad state of screening of inflow waste water; • Aeration of waste water and sludge is not energy efficient and shows operational problems;• Waste water pumping is inefficient, required much maintenance and deploys outdated design. Frequency control is not applied. • Separation of treated waste water from biological sludge is insufficient and, therefore, quality parameters of the treated water are not good; • Sedimentation tanks are open and cleaning stations are within city borders, smell is quite strong over long distance and shows methane content to be high but no single city uses anaerobic digestion technology; digestion systems which were built in the past, have been abandoned; • Filtered sludge is not utilized properly and poured out on sludge fields that have isolation underneath but are under open sky. Volumes of such a sludge residues only in Kiev city are 10 million m3 which are a serious threat to the environment. Sludge fields are usually within waste water company territory i.e. within city borders. • Monitoring and controlling shall be improved. The investments which Ukraine needs to realize in the coming years, are very substantial. Estimates amount to several hundreds of millions Euro. Investments will cover issues such as: 1. Modern technologies: better effluent quality and better river quality shall be achieved by applying new and efficient waste water treatment technologies. Technologies which reduce not only organic pollution, but also reduce Nitrogen and Phosphorus pollution (which cause massive growth of Algea in rivers). 2. Improvement of pump-technology: introducing modern, high-efficient pumps. Frequency controlled pumping , reducing the cost of pumping and reducing maintenance cost by use of intelligent monitoring systems. 3. Sustainable technologies: energy saving shall be achieved in order to decrease the cost of waste water treatment. Energy efficient technologies, such as anaerobic sludge digestion shall be applied as these solutions not only fit well to the tradition solutions of the former USSR, but they also increase sustainability. 4. Low-waste technologies: the cost for processing and disposal of biological sludge can be reduced by introducing so-called ‘low-waste-technologies’. These technologies produce less biological sludge and so reduce cost of operation. 5. Investments in modern monitoring equipment and facilities: data collection shall be improved so that Water Companies will be able to obtain more reliable data on water quality and on cost of operations. Besides, City of Kiev will be able to inform general public on water quality. 6. IT-systems: modern IT-systems for data processing will provide up-to-date information to the management of the Water Companies. Insight will be obtained in costs of operation. Besides, investment decisions can be better made. The abovementioned problems are typical for many of the WWTP’s in Ukraine. So, the multiplier effect of the pilot project can be very high. However, introduction of technology is required as well as familiarization of the management of water companies with modern technology. It shall be noted that the operational management of water companies in Ukraine have quite limited access to European technologies. At one location (Kharkiv) the project will generate dissemination of knowledge to other water companies throughout Ukraine. Two water companies (Dneprodpetrovsk, Kyiv) have already shown interest. Presently, hardly any of the treatment companies generate electricity, nor produce biogas. A pilot project under the program ‘Partners for Water’, especially designed with a purpose of helping Ukraine get through its challenges with water treatment issues and also to create better access to energy efficient technology, will mitigate the country’s problem of energy dependency to fossil fuel. As such, the project will contribute to the abatement of climate change. The Pilot Project shall present solutions for : • How to reduce the cost of treatment, in particular with respect to the energy cost, and so increase the future rent ability of the operations; • How to decrease the operational cost by implementing modern technologies, based on Dutch solutions; • Which investments are most cost effective and shall therefore be prioritized; ways to obtain international financing
