The project
Since February 2022, the people of Ukraine have suffered from the escalation of Russia’s war of aggression. Ukraine’s infrastructure has suffered significant damage, including that necessary to ensure basic subsistence. Ukrainians are forced to stay in unheated shelters and in some cases have no access to running drinking water. These events are not only affecting Ukraine, but the entire world.
HAMBURG WASSER does not want to close its eyes, but to take responsibility and support its Ukrainian colleagues. For this purpose, a solidarity partnership was established in August 2022 with Kyivvodokanal in order to support the Ukrainian capital utility with advice and material supplies.
In this way, HAMBURG WASSER is contributing to the Pact for Solidarity and the Future between the cities of Hamburg and Kyiv, which was concluded by the mayors of the two cities.
Activities
Even though the solidarity partnership was not officially signed until August, the first online meetings to get to know each other and take stock of the situation have been taking place since March 2022. Since then, there has been a regular online exchange and the first face-to-face meeting took place at IFAT in June last year. The Ukrainian-German team of colleagues from Kyivvodokanal and HAMBURG WASSER has defined two work packages in which they will work together in partnership: The optimization of the main water treatment plant in Kyiv, which is fed with water from the Desna River, as well as a professional knowledge exchange on key water and wastewater topics such as GIS, hydraulic modelling, water loss reduction and others. The overall project goal of the partnership is to establish a sound long-lasting cooperation in partnership between the two operators in frame of the Pact for Solidarity and Future between the cities of Hamburg and Kyiv.
Outlook
In addition to the regular online exchange, concrete workshops were held, for example at the end of February on the implementation and optimization of GIS. In the future, it is planned to hold further workshops and to continue the online exchange in its intensity. Due to the acute security situation in Kiev, it will probably not be possible for the Hamburg colleagues to support the Ukrainian colleagues on site in 2023. To compensate for this, a job shadowing is planned in Hamburg, where face-to-face meetings can take place and HAMBURG WASSER’s facilities can be visited together on site.
