Russia May Find Itself Amidst Shortage Of Drinking Water
- 19.06.2024, 12:13
Wear and tear of treatment facilities has reached 90%.
Most treatment facilities in Russia were built in the 1960s and 1970s and have worn out by an average of 80% across the country, and by 90% in some regions, Sergei Kolunov, a member of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Utilities, told Izvestia.
There are about 60,000 water supply treatment facilities, 21,000 sewage pumping stations, and 12,000 sewage treatment facilities in the country, noted Alexander Kogan, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Ecology, Natural Resources, and Environmental Protection. Another 20% of the country's population, according to him, live in conditions where there are no centralized or local treatment facilities.
At the same time, only 1-2% of the communal infrastructure is updated annually, although the annual wear and tear is 3%, emphasizes State Duma deputy Ilya Wolfson.
The deterioration of treatment facilities not only worsens the condition of the water (discharges of untreated wastewater contribute to the proliferation of cyanobacteria, lead to the death of fish and underwater flora, poisoning of people, etc.), but also increases the costs of water treatment in cases where drinking water is taken from reservoirs, Kogan noted.
Deputy Minister of Construction and Housing and Utilities of Russia Alexander Eresko recalled that the President of the Russian Federation in his address to the Federal Assembly instructed to allocate 4.5 trillion rubles for the modernization of the public utility infrastructure. However, according to him, it is “absolutely impossible” to solve the problem by allocating federal funds.
The announced amount is a huge amount of money, but it will only be enough to solve the most “urgent problems,” Wolfson confirmed. He noted that it is necessary to create conditions for increasing the investment attractiveness of the housing and utilities system as a whole.
If nothing is done, the country will come to a “full-fledged water crisis and a shortage of drinking water,” says Ivan Andrievsky, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the engineering company “2K.” “We can also try to involve private business in the issue. Today, concessions are being concluded in the country in the areas of lighting and heating, but investors are not being attracted to water treatment as intensively,” Andrievsky noted.