Volgograd residents seek end to vibration torture from boiler house

Residents of new buildings on Glazkova Street in central Volgograd have recorded a video appeal to the authorities asking to be saved from the low-frequency hum and noise from a recently built new boiler house near the former tractor parts and standards plant. The attempt to complain about this to Governor Andrey Bocharov was, according to residents, a failure.

“We are residents of the new building in the «Tsekh» residential complex,” says one resident in the video. “We have gathered here to declare the impossibility of living in our homes, as well as the impossibility of walking on the playground. The problems are related to the round-the-clock low-frequency hum and vibration from the boiler house located next to the new building, built with budget funds under a state order. A threat to our lives and health hangs over us, our families, and our pets. We ask the authorities to acknowledge the problem. We ask the authorities and services to acknowledge the problem and take responsibility for violating our rights to safe living, and to oblige the guilty parties to eliminate the violations.”

An unacceptable noise level, confirmed by documents, was also recorded by Rospotrebnadzor. Residents provided an expert conclusion where in a number of apartments, specialists from the Volgograd Region Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology detected unacceptable sound levels and pressure.

Now, residents of the new buildings on Glazkova Street are preparing to file a collective lawsuit.

“Local authorities headed by Andrey Ivanovich Bocharov came to inspect the boiler house. We, together with some residents of the house, went out to meet him, but we were not even allowed near him,” one local resident said. “Therefore, a conversation about eliminating and regulating the issue did not take place. Moreover, city authorities are commenting that we, supposedly, «need to get used to it.» Although getting used to such noise is an impossible task. It is fundamentally impossible to walk with a child on the playground near the house and be near the house because the boiler house emits a strong low-frequency noise.”

Earlier we wrote about how the governor of Volgograd Oblast already visited the new boiler house on a working trip. Proactive residents who wished to speak personally with Bocharov on a winter day off were turned away right at the entrance to the enterprise, while inside the structure they were talking about its capacities and the expenditure of over two billion rubles (over $20 million at current rates) on construction.