Donetsk, Oct 11 — DAN. Eight problem river areas with a total length of more than 40 kilometers will be cleaned in the new regions in 2023, Head of the Federal Agency for Water Resources Dmitry Kirillov said at a meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on Wednesday.

  “We’ve started to clean the rivers Lugan and Olkhovka in Lugansk and Kalmius in Donetsk; these works are scheduled for 2023, ” Kirillov said. “More than 40 kilometers of problem river stretches are due to be cleaned within a year; the state register has listed more than 400 water bodies (in the new regions).”

In 2024, the Agency plans to clean the explored river beds. The budget will fund the works in 2024 and 2025.   Its task in 2024 is to determine water withdrawal limits as the Republics have lost the two main sources, the Seversky Donets and the Dnepr, he said.

Earlier reports said that the Russian government would allocate more than 12 billion rubles for environmental measures including river cleaning in the new territories.*jk