SEVASTOPOL, June 20. /TASS/. The risk of seawater off Crimea’s western coast becoming contaminated after the collapse of the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant (HPP) is minimal, as contaminated waters are carried by the sea’s currents in the other direction, an expert told TASS on Tuesday.
"Surface waters in the Black Sea move counterclockwise. The situation is developing according to the forecasted scenario - the current is flowing from the Dnieper-Bug estuary toward the Ukrainian coast (Odessa), and then toward the coasts of Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Now and then, vortex structures swirling clockwise emerge. Potentially, they may catch some part of the contaminated water and carry it toward Crimea. But now, this is improbable considering current winds and streams," said Sergey Stanichny, an expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences, oceanologist and hydrophysicist.
According to the expert, even if Black Sea waters flow toward Crimea, the concentration of hazardous substances will gradually decrease. "The biggest shock was to the section between the Dnieper-Bug estuary and Odessa. In the first days, a vortex emerged there and accumulated hazardous substances for some time. Vortex structures may capture part of the water but it should be borne in mind that the further from the source, the lower the concentration of harmful substances," he explained.
Odessa’s authorities said earlier that pathogens of rotavirus, salmonellae and cholera vibrio were found in the seawater off the coast. A ban on fishing, selling and eating fish and seafood has been imposed in the city. The sanitary situation has worsened dramatically after trash from the areas that were flooded after the Kakhovka HPP’s collapse reached the coast.