Area flooded after Kakhovka HPP disaster to increase - Ukrhydroenergo head

MOSCOW. June 9 (Interfax) - The area flowed following the emergency at the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant (HPP) and the spill of the Kakhovka Reservoir will highly likely grow despite the drop in the height of flooding, Igor Sirota, general director of the Ukrhydroenergo state-owned energy company, said.

"The level of the Kakhovka Reservoir will go down, but the spill will highly likely increase. It will not grow higher, but it will be more spread out, and, whereas the area of 600 square kilometers was flooded in the morning, it will be increasing, I believe," Ukrainian media outlets quoted the top manager as saying on the Channel Five.

The peak height of flooding is decreasing somehow, but the Kakhovka Reservoir still has large reserves of water which are likely to be processed at a slower pace, he said.

"If earlier it was 30-35 centimeters per second, now we're seeing five-seven centimeters. As of today, the water level in the reservoir is already 12.5 meters [in the evening of June 8]. We know that the 'dead spot' where the drainage is possible is 12.70. In other words, we have already passed this spot," Sirota said.

At the current pace of one meter a day, the decrease of the level in the Kakhovka Reservoir could continue for about seven days, and afterwards the water will start gradually dropping into the riverbed and the Black Sea, he said.

As report, the water level in the Kakhovka Reservior is continuing to decrease, and it was 11.74 meters in the Nikopol area as of 8 a.m. on Friday.

Alexander Prokudin, the head of the Kherson regional military administration, said the water on Ukraine's right bank stood at 5.38 meters on the average following the flooding and 5.35 in Kherson, in the morning of June 9, having decreased by 20 centimeters overnight.