Mitryasova, O. CHRONICLES OF THIRST: DOCUMENTING MYKOLAIV'S WATER SECURITY CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS IN A WAR-AFFECTED CITY: Monograph. Mykolaiv: PMBSNU, 2026, 124 p.

CHRONICLES OF THIRST: DOCUMENTING MYKOLAIV'S WATER SECURITY CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS IN A WAR-AFFECTED CITY Fig. 1.34. 2026: Mykolaiv residents continue to go to the points of dispensing purified water (author's photo). This incident was a verdict on the old infrastructure. The damaged duker, put into operation back in 1988, has exhausted its physical resource. Two strands of steel pipes, which ran under the riverbed at a distance of 190 meters, could not withstand decades of operation and the aggressive effects of salt water of past years. The cost of repairing this section — almost 47 million hryvnias — has become the price that the city is forced to pay for years of inaction and forced compromises. The narrative of the Mykolaiv queues has changed again. Now people were discussing complex engineering terms: "sanitation with a polyethylene pipe", "specialized installation organizations", "duker" (Fig. 1.35). The repair work, scheduled for January 18, 2026, has forced thousands of people to take out their legendary carts again and remember the addresses of nearby wells. This accident also brought to the surface the painful issue of managerial effectiveness. The documents recalled that back in the summer of 2023, at the height of the Kakhovka disaster, it was planned to reconstruct the same duker. However, due to bureaucratic delays and terminated contracts with contractors in 2024, time was lost. At the beginning of 2026, the city had to correct these errors in an emergency mode, patching up the system, which literally fell apart under the riverbed. 66