Where the Kazennyi Torets river begins

"A river begins from a small stream" - everyone knows the lines from the children's song. So where does the Kazennyi Torets river, an important blue highway of the Donetsk land, take its beginning?

 

The Kazennyi Torets gully. A pond in the bed of the Kazennyi Torets river. Pokrovsk district, Donetsk region

The spring with the coordinates 48.2701799, 37.510355 lies in the Pokrovsk district, 4 kilometres east of the village of Ivanivka and 2 kilometres north of the T-05-11 road. 

Only 3 kilometres to the south another watercourse is born - the Vovcha river, but it flows in a southern and south-western direction towards the mighty Dnipro, while the Kazennyi Torets goes west and north and empties into theSiverskyi Donets. The upper reaches of the Kazennyi Torets lie in the southern part of the gully of the same name, which stretches for 5 kilometres from north-west to south-east.

The Kazennyi Torets gully. Pokrovsk district

The hollow with its steep slopes and level bottom is reminiscent of a football stadium with a bright green cover of grass.

 

The slopes of the Kazennyi Torets gully

This inimitable natural landscape with its early-flowering shrubs and grasses was created by nature itself, and somewhere here there must be a life-giving spring. Only in the wild field can you see the dwarf almond, or bobovnyk, a fragrant honey plant. The branching shrub with bright pink flowers attracts bees and other insects.

Dwarf almond on the slopes of the Kazennyi Torets gully

The impassable thickets of blackthorn covered themselves in white sheets even before the leaves opened. In autumn the prickly plum will be strewn with blue fruit with a waxy bloom.

 

Islands of blackthorn on the slopes of the Kazennyi Torets gully

In this picturesque ravine you can study the plant cover of the Donetsk steppe, and the closeness of the groundwater gives the representatives of the flora their juiciness and saturated shades. The variety of colours is especially bright at the end of April and the beginning of May.

 

Periwinkle and other spring flowers on the slopes of the Kazennyi Torets gully

A protective shelterbelt adorns the gully. Birds nest in the green massifs and in the coastal strip.

The green frame of the Kazennyi Torets gully

Through the centre of the hollow runs a water-bearing vein, and a fading spring breaks through to the surface from the depths.

The Kazennyi Torets gully

The state of the source turned out not to be as poetic as in the song. A concrete ring and a metal fence by the spring show that the well was looked after, that kind hands cared for preserving the life-giving water. Apparently a cross or a canopy stood by the spring, but the logs rotted and collapsed. There was probably also a little board saying that the Kazennyi Torets takes its beginning here. Wild growth has taken the spring captive and it is impossible to get near the water.

 

The source of the Kazennyi Torets river

An enormous concrete trough has been set under the spring, into which the surplus water used to pour. Perhaps cows were once pastured in the gully, and the animals came up to the trough to drink. The nearest villages, Tymofiivka and Lozuvatske, have emptied; in Ivanivka and Novooleksandrivka the farms are destroyed and there is no longer anyone to pasture.

 

An abandoned watering place on the pasture

There is nobody to come and clear the little spring that once filled the Kazennyi Torets with a ringing stream of water. Why are our small and medium-sized rivers on the verge of disappearing? The water in these blue arteries grows less with every year, the beds dry up, the water space fills with reeds.

 

Ponds in the bed of the Kazennyi Torets river

Ecologists consider that dams and embankments are the greatest misfortune for natural water bodies. The ploughed-up banks, the unwise use of water resources, pollution with agricultural and industrial waste do irreparable harm to the environment.

A dam and a ploughed field along the Kazennyi Torets river

Winters with little snow and a dry summer period do nothing for the fullness of the rivers and streams. In the silt the speed of the blue ribbons is lost, the life-giving flow disappears, and the floodplain turns into a marsh. In the upper part of the Kazennyi Torets several ponds have been created, passing one into another in a chain. The local people use these artificial reservoirs for watering and for breeding fish.

Artificial reservoirs on the Kazennyi Torets river

In the southern part of the Myroliubivka reservoir the Kazennyi Torets meets its shallow tributary, the Zhuravka, which has barely made its way to it along the ravines and gullies. How is the poor little river to fill with healing power if the residents of the riverside villages throw household and building rubbish into what was once a full-flowing stream and make every effort to destroy it?

The Zhuravka river. The settlement of Hrodivka, Pokrovsk district

The Myroliubivka reservoir in the bed of the Kazennyi Torets river

After Myroliubivka the Kazennyi Torets turns north, and inNovoekonomichne it is joined from the west by another long-suffering river, the Sinna, which is dying in the sludge settling ponds and rock dumps of the coal enterprises.

 

The source of the Sinna river amid sludge settling ponds and rock dumps

At the place where the rivers merge, the flow of water is so small that even the cows cannot drink their fill.

The Kazennyi Torets within the settlement of Novoekonomichne and the village of Mykolaivka, Pokrovsk district 

Further on the Kazennyi Torets carries its waters through the villages of the Dobropillia area and heads forDruzhkivka, Kramatorsk andSloviansk, to serve the industrial water-supply needs of the giants of the industrial region.

An artificial pond in the bed of the Kazennyi Torets river