Over the past two years, Ukraine’s water legislation has moved faster than it did in the whole previous decade. The core wastewater law took effect back in 2023, but 2025–2026 is when the details actually landed: new rules for regulating discharges, changes to the special water-use permitting process, and a draft law bringing Ukrainian standards closer to EU directives. For anyone who owns or designs treatment facilities, this isn’t an abstract legal topic — it directly determines what parameters to design for in new construction and what to check during reconstruction.
The core law is already in force — and it sets the frame
The Law “On Wastewater Disposal and Treatment” was adopted in January 2023 and took effect on August 7 of that year. It was drafted around the requirements of Council Directive 91/271/EEC on urban wastewater treatment, so the underlying logic is European: mandatory secondary treatment for settlements above a certain size, local treatment facilities for individual consumers, and a clearer split of responsibility between centralized and decentralized wastewater disposal. If you haven’t looked closely at this law before, now’s the time — every change made in 2025–2026 builds on top of it rather than replacing it.
December 2025: new rules for regulating return waters
On December 10, 2025, Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers adopted Resolution No. 1626, which took effect on December 16 and applies starting in 2026. It changes the exact mechanism that anyone discharging wastewater into water bodies has to deal with: the procedure for setting composition standards for return (waste) waters, the control process, and — most noticeable in practice — the procedure for obtaining and renewing special water-use permits.
For businesses, this means stricter requirements for laboratory testing and for justifying each permitting decision. Where it used to be enough to submit a calculation and get a permit without much supporting analysis, regulators now expect more detailed justification of the figures. In practice, that means one thing: before renewing or applying for a permit, it’s worth checking whether your actual discharge composition after treatment still matches what’s stated in the paperwork — rather than relying on calculations from five years ago.
June 2025: individual technological standards get more specific
A bit earlier, in June 2025, Resolution No. 648 took effect, amending the 2002 procedure on maximum permissible discharge standards. Among other things, it changed the list of documents required to establish individual technological standards for drinking water use — relevant to utilities and to companies providing centralized water supply and wastewater services. It sounds like a minor detail, but this exact document list is where permit renewal applications most often get stuck.
A draft law on harmonization with EU standards
Separately, it’s worth keeping an eye on a draft law that Ukraine’s parliament has already passed in its first reading. It amends three laws at once: “On Wastewater Disposal and Treatment,” “On Drinking Water and Drinking Water Supply,” and “On State Regulation in the Sphere of Utility Services.” The goal is to bring national legislation in line with EU directives on urban wastewater treatment and drinking water quality, as required under the Association Agreement. The text is still being refined ahead of the second reading, so the final version may change — but the direction is clear: quality and control standards are moving toward European benchmarks, not away from them.
What this has to do with new construction and reconstruction of treatment plants
Every change listed above directly affects two scenarios: designing new treatment facilities and reconstructing outdated ones. As part of implementing the Association Agreement, a state program for the technical modernization of wastewater utilities is in force (and continues to be rolled out), targeting specific goals based on the population equivalent served:
– settlements with a population equivalent up to 5,000 — decentralized wastewater systems for collection, transport, and treatment;
– 5,000 to 10,000 — centralized wastewater disposal with primary treatment;
– 10,000 and above — centralized wastewater disposal with a full treatment cycle, including a biological stage.
In practice, this means new or reconstructed treatment plants need to be designed around the category the facility actually falls into — not a generic template copied from a fifteen-year-old project. For facilities serving over 10,000 people, secondary (biological) treatment is no longer optional; it’s a requirement, and that’s the benchmark to work from when drafting a reconstruction scope of work.
Effluent quality parameters: what to check
Ukrainian legislation doesn’t set a single universal figure for the whole country — specific maximum permissible discharge limits are calculated individually for each outfall, depending on the category of the receiving water body, its assimilative capacity, and the sensitivity of areas downstream. But the set of parameters that get monitored is consistent, and it’s what should guide both new construction and reconstruction:
– suspended solids — the baseline indicator of mechanical treatment, and the first thing regulators check;
– BOD5 and COD — indicators of organic pollution, directly tied to how effective the biological treatment stage is;
– total and ammonium nitrogen, and phosphorus — the parameters older plants most often fail on, since they were typically designed without a dedicated denitrification or dephosphatization stage;
– residual disinfection indicators — checked separately, since disinfecting with sodium hypochlorite is itself a source of residual chlorine, which is regulated in turn.
If a plant you’re planning to reconstruct never had dedicated nitrogen- and phosphorus-removal stages, now — while standards are being revised to move closer to EU benchmarks — is the right time to build those in, rather than doing a second reconstruction two or three years down the line.
What treatment plant owners should do right now
Check the date your special water-use permit was last renewed — if it predates December 2025, it’s worth reviewing against the new procedure under Resolution No. 1626 before your next scheduled renewal. If you’re planning new construction or reconstruction of a treatment plant, design the technological scheme around the facility’s actual population-equivalent category rather than the bare minimum required today. And keep an eye on the draft harmonization law — even at first-reading stage, it already gives a clear sense of where requirements are headed over the next few years.
If you need help assessing whether your treatment facility meets current and upcoming requirements, get in touch — we can help put together a design or reconstruction scope of work that accounts for current Ukrainian legislation.
