Ground­wa­ter in Cherni­hiv region

The ter­ri­to­ry of the Cherni­hiv region is locat­ed with­in the Dnipro-Donet­sk arte­sian basin. It lies with­in the Polis­sya bio­cli­mat­ic zone and belongs to the zone of exces­sive mois­ture. The com­bi­na­tion of favor­able geo­graph­ic, cli­mat­ic, geo­log­i­cal, and hydro­ge­o­log­i­cal con­di­tions on the ter­ri­to­ry of the region has led to the for­ma­tion of sig­nif­i­cant ground­wa­ter resources.

In terms of ground­wa­ter resources (8326.700 thou­sand m3/day), the Cherni­hiv region ranks first in Ukraine. Ground­wa­ter deposits in Cherni­hiv are asso­ci­at­ed with aquifers in qua­ter­nary, neo­gene, pale­o­gene, upper and low­er cre­ta­ceous sed­i­men­ta­ry deposits.

At the same time, the region is char­ac­ter­ized by an extreme­ly low lev­el of explo­ration of pre­dict­ed ground­wa­ter reserves — about 7%, and the exploita­tion of ground­wa­ter reserves in the Cherni­hiv region is less than 10%.

For cen­tral­ized water sup­ply in Cherni­hiv, under­ground waters in pale­o­gene and upper and low­er cre­ta­ceous sed­i­men­ta­ry deposits are used. The nat­ur­al hydro­geo­chem­i­cal fea­ture of these waters is an increased iron con­tent (in both the pale­o­gene and cre­ta­ceous aquifers) and man­ganese con­tent (in the pale­o­gene aquifer), which neces­si­tates appro­pri­ate water treat­ment before being sup­plied to con­sumers.

There are also min­er­al water deposits in the ter­ri­to­ry of Cherni­hiv region. These are min­er­al table waters with­out spe­cif­ic com­po­nents and with low min­er­al­iza­tion prop­er­ties (1–5 g/dm), locat­ed in the mid­dle juras­sic deposits. The deposits are locat­ed in the city of Mena and the urban-type set­tle­ment of Berez­na.

It should be not­ed that despite the enor­mous resources of under­ground water in the region, there have been prob­lems with drink­ing water qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty in recent times. These issues have affect­ed the water from the first water-bear­ing hori­zon, which is used for indi­vid­ual water sup­ply in rur­al areas through wells. Dur­ing the low-water year of 2020, a sig­nif­i­cant drop in the water lev­el in wells was observed in sev­er­al set­tle­ments. Such prob­lems, along with the wide­spread con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of ground­wa­ter in agro-land­scapes by nitrates, require urgent mea­sures aimed at pro­vid­ing the pop­u­la­tion with water from pro­tect­ed sources. The unit­ed ter­ri­to­r­i­al com­mu­ni­ties should pay atten­tion to these issues. The most promis­ing solu­tion in this regard seems to be the devel­op­ment of the wide­spread water-bear­ing hori­zon in Pale­o­gene deposits, which is pro­tect­ed from sur­face pol­lu­tion, char­ac­ter­ized by good qual­i­ty and a sig­nif­i­cant amount of water, and locat­ed at depths that allow water to be extract­ed with­out exces­sive costs (up to 150–200 meters).