Water Systems of the Tsyrkuny Community

Until 2022, twelve artesian wells supplied water to 85% of the housing stock of the Tsyrkuny community. Three are working today. The community has no wastewater treatment plants at all, and had none before the war either.

This is not a breakdown to be repaired. It is the condition in which a community north of Kharkiv is, right now, taking decisions that will hold for a decade: where to drill, where to discharge, whose system to connect to. Here is what is known about the community's water systems, where the data comes from, and how it measures against the standards Ukraine is moving towards under the Association Agreement.

Key facts

• What this is. A summary of what the Tsyrkuny community's own Development Strategy to 2030 and its Implementation Plan say about water supply, wastewater and water ecosystems.
• Water supply. Three of the twelve pre-war wells are operating; centralised water supply coverage has fallen from 85% to 40%.
• Wastewater. No treatment plants exist and the pumping stations do not work; 80% of households rely on cesspits and septic tanks.
• Water ecosystems. More than 270 hectares of water bodies: 8.5 km of the Kharkiv river, the Vialovske reservoir (133 ha), 240 ha of floodplain meadows.
• Assessment against EU standards. The Strategy rates the community's overall alignment with EU requirements at 31%, and wastewater at 10% — the lowest score of any sector.

Why water supply, sewerage and the river are counted together

In a community with no centralised sewerage these are not three separate topics but a single closed loop.

Almost everyone actually living in the community draws water from private wells 18–25 metres deep in their own yards, or from street wells and standpipes. Groundwater here lies 8–15 metres down, and the aquifers are linked to the alluvial deposits of the Kharkiv river. In other words, the source of drinking water sits shallow and is fed by the same landscape into which 80% of households discharge their waste through cesspits «in varying technical condition: from modern septic tanks with biological post-treatment to old leaking pits».

The Strategy states the consequence plainly: leaking pits «create risks of groundwater contamination». Liquid household waste is not collected in the community at all.

Water supply: before and now

Before the full-scale invasion the centralised system served the villages of Tsyrkuny, Cherkaski Tyshky and Ruski Tyshky. Groundwater quality then met sanitary standards for drinking water supply, with mineralisation of 0.8–1.2 g/l.

The quality of what remains is a separate story. According to the Strategy, groundwater in the community exceeds maximum permissible concentrations by 3–5 times for petroleum products, 2.8 times for cadmium and 2.2 times for nitrates. The document notes that this is a shared threat for all neighbouring communities, and that the water requires mandatory boiling or filtration.

The gap between the instrument and the impression

The most striking thing in the document is not the figures themselves but how far they diverge from what residents perceive.

In the community's household survey (July–August 2025, 134 questionnaires from all nine villages), 62.7% of respondents rated their water quality as good or excellent. A further 29.9% treat their water additionally. Meanwhile the instrumental assessment in the same Strategy reports exceedances of 2.2 to 5 times.

This is not a contradiction, and nobody is at fault. It is the normal situation where no systematic monitoring exists: people judge water by taste, smell and clarity, while nitrates, cadmium and petroleum products have neither taste nor smell. It is precisely this gap that makes community-based water monitoring not an optional extra but a basic need — without it, decisions are taken blind in the literal sense.

Wastewater: the worst-performing area

The Strategy leaves no room for interpretation here: «There is no centralised sewerage coverage. Sewage pumping stations do not work. No wastewater treatment plants exist, which creates serious environmental and sanitary risks through the discharge of untreated effluent into the environment.»

The community's summary table of utility services shows the same picture over time: centralised sewerage coverage of 45% in 2021, 20% in 2025, with a target of 40% by 2030. Over the same period the share of households on local systems rose from 55% to 80%.

The Strategy quantifies the consequence separately. On its assessment, where centralised sewerage coverage is below 30%, the risk of intestinal infection outbreaks rises 3.5 times; reaching 40% coverage would bring that risk back to an acceptable level.

Tellingly, residents themselves place sewerage in their top four needs — 47.0% consider it a priority. And half of those surveyed are concerned specifically about the environmental side: contamination of forests, water bodies and fields.

Water ecosystems: what needs protecting

The community's water bodies cover more than 270 hectares. The principal ones are:

• The Kharkiv river — 8.5 km across the community from north-east to south-west, 38.5 ha of water surface. It is the ecological axis of the whole territory.
• The Vialovske reservoir (known locally as «Vodobud») — 133 ha near Cherkaski Tyshky, the community's largest water body. It is fed by the Vialyi stream and its spring tributaries, which form a cascade of ponds and marshy areas.
• Part of the Muromske reservoir — 78.4 ha near Ruski Tyshky.
• Four ponds totalling around 20 ha (the largest, 13.96 ha, near Petrivka). Only one is leased; the rest are in municipal ownership.

The greatest value here is not the water itself but what surrounds it. The 240 hectares of floodplain meadows along the Kharkiv river and the wetlands around the Vialovske reservoir were, in the Strategy's words, «important centres for the conservation of biological diversity»: more than 40 bird species nested here, including species listed in the Red Book of Ukraine.

The war took most of that. The Strategy records the loss of more than 60% of the bird population and contamination of water bodies, and estimates that restoring biological diversity will take 50–70 years of dedicated conservation work. Part of the floodplain is potentially mined, which postpones any work there for years.

How this measures against EU standards

The Strategy contains a dedicated section assessing the community's practice against EU requirements in the context of the Association Agreement (Annex XXX, 26 environmental directives). The overall score is 31% of target levels. Wastewater scored 10%: the lowest of any sector in the community.

One point should be added to what the Strategy says. Directive 91/271/EEC, on which it relies, has already been replaced: on 27 November 2024 the EU adopted Directive (EU) 2024/3019 concerning urban wastewater treatment, which repeals 91/271/EEC with effect from 1 August 2027. Member States must transpose it by 31 July 2027.

For the community this matters in one detail: the threshold above which an agglomeration must collect and treat its wastewater falls from 2,000 to 1,000 population equivalent. The bar Tsyrkuny is preparing for will therefore become stricter from 2027, not looser.

Another point in the Strategy is easy to miss: the community's participation in river basin management is formal only — through representation on the basin council of the Siverskyi Donets rivers. But the community has no water strategy of its own, and this, the document notes, complicates access to European funding through the LIFE programme and the Cohesion Fund.

What the community plans to do

The Implementation Plan for 2026–2030 sets out the water tasks step by step, with deadlines and funding sources.

One clarification about the table: the funds and donors named in it are sources the community expects to draw on under the Plan, not money received. None of this funding is confirmed as of publication.

The key decision here is strategic, and it has already been taken. The community has chosen connection to the centralised wastewater system of the city of Kharkiv instead of building its own treatment plants: on the Strategy's assessment this minimises technical and financial risk. Own treatment plants remain the fallback option, and land is being reserved for them.

The total investment need for water infrastructure named by the Strategy is a minimum of USD 12 million over 2025–2028: 8.5 million to restore water supply to 75% coverage and 2.8 million for sewerage to 40%.

The foundation's role in this

We are precise here, because the people reading this page will check.

The foundation has worked with the community since September 2024. Seven deliveries of aid, each formalised by an acceptance certificate, all entered in the public register of aid provided. They were generators: the community was entering winter after occupation, and electricity was the precondition for everything else, including the wells. The history of this partnership is set out in the description of the programme.

Our academic lead sits on the Strategy working group. Professor Ihor Dunaiev is listed in its membership as an invited expert from the Institute of Public Administration at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. How the roles in drafting the Strategy were divided is set out separately in «Tsyrkuny 2030: What the Foundation Contributed».

Our current work is data and paperwork. We are consolidating the community's water indicators into a verifiable form, checking them against the EU requirements now in force, and preparing a project application for international funding of community-based monitoring of water ecosystems. The Tsyrkuny community is the anchor community in that application: the model developed here is intended to be replicated elsewhere.

What the foundation did not do

• The foundation carried out no laboratory measurements of water quality in the community. Every figure on this page comes from the Strategy and its Implementation Plan.
• The foundation is not the author of the Strategy and did not fund its development.
• The foundation neither built nor financed any water supply or wastewater facility in the community. The aid delivered was generators, and it is recorded as such in the register.
• The foundation did not conduct the household survey from which residents' assessments are taken.

What follows from this

Three things become visible when the community's documents are placed side by side.

First. The cheapest item on the whole list is monitoring. UAH 150,000 a year buys 48 samples and, on the Plan's expectation, identifies 3–5 sources of contamination. Compare that with UAH 75 million for networks. Data costs five hundred times less than pipes, and without it the pipes are laid blind.

Second. Almost the entire water plan is written against external money. In task 2.4.6 the local budget's share is 9%. The rest is the Ukraine Facility and the State Regional Development Fund. Without external financing the plan remains text.

Third. The window is narrower than it looks. The directive against which the community is preparing its wastewater solutions changes in August 2027, and the threshold becomes stricter. Decisions on connecting to Kharkiv, on reserving land and on design documentation are being taken now — and they will either account for the state of the river, the floodplains and the groundwater, or they will not.

Sources

• Development Strategy of the Tsyrkuny Rural Territorial Community 2026–2030 — approved by order of the head of the Tsyrkuny Rural Military Administration No. 01-04/82 of 16.06.2026. Data on water resources, utilities, EU alignment and survey results.
• Implementation Plan of the Development Strategy for 2026–2030 — operational objectives 2.1, 2.4, 4.1 and 4.3: deadlines, indicators and funding sources for the water tasks.
• Directive (EU) 2024/3019 concerning urban wastewater treatment — adopted 27.11.2024, repeals Directive 91/271/EEC with effect from 01.08.2027; transposition deadline 31.07.2027.
• Directive (EU) 2020/2184 on the quality of water intended for human consumption — risk-based approach.
• Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC — Article 9 on recovery of costs for water services.
• Register of aid provided by the foundation — acceptance certificates.

This material is informational. All indicators of the state of the Tsyrkuny community's water systems are given per the community's Development Strategy 2026–2030 and its Implementation Plan, with the source stated; the foundation carried out no laboratory measurements of its own. The status of EU acts was verified against EUR-Lex as of 07.08.2026.