There are 2,230 streets in Kyiv with a length of 1,665.71 km and a total area of more than 27 million square meters. m. Approximately every second street has a storm sewer system, the total length of which is 832.5 km - this is the same as from Kyiv to the border with Poland.
Jokes, memes, anecdotes and photoshopped images on social networks about various (funny and not so funny) events in our lives are convincing proof of the optimistic worldview of Ukrainians. One of the last reasons for folk art was provided by long rain in Kyiv - a record for 133 years in terms of rainfall. The center of attention, as often happens, was the city mayor Vitali Klitschko (in one of the photoshopped photos he was on a surfboard in the middle of the street). However, as always, there were “pessimists” who predictably accused the city authorities and the mayor personally of inactivity, unprofessionalism, and so on. What is true and what is just playing politics?
I don't like Kievavtodor
Just a few years ago, such a sticker on the rear window of a car was constantly seen on the roads of Kyiv, but now it would look out of place on most Kyiv streets, where a major reconstruction was carried out. However, “Kievavtodor” is mentioned here not because of the roads, but because it is responsible for the condition of the city’s storm drains, through which rainfall must be drained. What kind of farm is this?
There are 2,230 streets in Kyiv with a length of 1,665.71 km and a total area of more than 27 million square meters. m. Approximately every second street has a storm sewer system, the total length of which is 832.5 km - this is the same as from Kyiv to the border with Poland. It is necessary to clearly distinguish between storm sewer and domestic sewerage, which has a separate network. Storm drainage is a system of pipes that drain rain and melt water into open or hidden sewers in the city's rivers. So, in the end, all the rain and snow from Kyiv ends up in the Dnieper and the lakes around it. As a rule, the system operates on gravity, that is, water is drained along the existing urban terrain from above to the lowlands. In some places, in certain places, it is necessary to install pumping stations for emergency pumping during rainstorms. For example, there is one on Elena Teliga Street under the overpass near the Dorogozhichi metro station, but sometimes it can’t cope, that is, it pumps out gradually, and not as much as we would like.
To receive and remove precipitation, reception wells are installed on the roads, onto which storm grates are installed, which must withstand the weight of even cargo trucks. And this pleasure is not cheap; one such grille costs almost 5 thousand UAH. In total, there are almost 30 thousand such wells and gratings in Kyiv, and if you lay them along the banks of the Dnieper (which is 20 km), then they will stretch further for another 10 km!
Four factors leading to Venice
The first is piggy or, scientifically speaking, anthropogenic. All the residents of Kiev and guests of the capital who throw away cigarette butts, tickets, receipts, bags and other garbage on the streets, that is, behave like young... piglets, create the preconditions for the subsequent spilling of water on the streets. Everything that does not end up in trash cans for its intended purpose sooner or later ends up in storm wells and clogs the storm drain. This should include, that is, add, sand, which is used to sprinkle the streets and sidewalks of the capital in winter, and this is 70 thousand tons annually. Maybe someone, seeing it in the receiving well, will decide that the utility workers put it there on purpose? At least this assumption flashed across the network. But that's not true.
The second factor is urban planning. If houses, roads and asphalt appear in the open spaces where trees and grass once grew, then the water that previously fell from the sky and was absorbed into the ground now has nowhere to go and flows into the storm drain. That is, continuous or “compacting” development leads to an increase in the load on the “raincoat”, especially since it was designed when such development was not planned in the future. This situation occurs, for example, around the Levoberezhnaya metro station, where the system is clearly not designed for such flows from the dense buildings around it.
The third factor is mental. It sometimes happens that after the construction of new sections of roads, storm drains that worked before turn out to be either paved over or so clogged with construction debris that they can no longer perform their functions. This, for example, happened after the construction of a roadway at the intersection of Kulzhenko Family and Polyarnaya streets or an interchange at the intersection of Polyarnaya and Bogatyrskaya.
The fourth factor, one might say, is divine! No one can predict how much water the Almighty will send from heaven to earth. If you design rainwater drainage to the maximum, it will simply be an irrational use of funds, so the “raincoat” is designed based on the average rainfall. And even the richest cities in the world don’t allow themselves to do the maximum. For example, in Dubai there is no storm drainage system at all, and when it rains very, very occasionally, it is a catastrophe on a global scale for city services.
In 2017, heavy rain flooded Berlin. In just a few hours, three months' worth of precipitation fell, several metro stations were flooded, the center was paralyzed, and a state of emergency was even declared in the city. I wonder if the mayor of Berlin was blamed for this situation?
War as the fifth factor
If you have been a careful observer, in past years you have noticed small crews in orange vests on the roads, removing grates from stormwater wells and using trivial shovels to dig out everything that was in them. Such procedures were especially intensified in the spring, after the snow melted (along with the debris accumulated under it), but in fact they continued throughout the year, except for periods of severe frost. It is clear that such work has now been greatly reduced due to the fact that a significant number of Kievavtodor workers have gone to war.
However, even the war does not stop individual characters from the Kiev City Council and the environs of Bankova Street, who have already become boring to television viewers, but who, on every occasion, organize ritual dances with chants addressed to the Kyiv authorities. And they even use the vagaries of nature (in the form of 68% of the monthly precipitation norm) as an “argument” to blame the hated and unattainable mayor for this.
