Residents Told to Thaw Pipes at Own Cost After Week-Long Water Outage
Residents of a house with centralized water supply in the town of Shchuchye have been living without water for a week. 45.RU was told about the problem by Lyubov, a resident of the two-story, 22-apartment building at 38 Sovetskaya Street.
«There were severe frosts of nearly -40 degrees Celsius (-40°F), that night the water in the pipe froze. Fourteen years ago, they laid a temporary pipe over the old one, and this temporary one remained, and then froze. This happened at 8 a.m., on Thursday we called our »Vodokanal« (water utility), they refused to thaw us out, saying they wouldn»t go in such cold. We contacted the prosecutor«s office, submitted a written appeal to the governor»s reception,« the interlocutor said.
According to the interlocutor, the district administration proposed that residents thaw the pipe at their own expense. The Trans-Urals residents did not appreciate this offer.
Denis Chizhov, director of OOO «Gorodskoye Vodopostableniye» (City Water Supply LLC), told 45.RU that the organization only services main pipelines, and the pipe the residents are talking about is ownerless, meaning it is not on the utility company«s balance sheet.
«I proved to the prosecutors that this is not my zone of balance responsibility. This problem has existed since 2014, I raise this issue every year and we constantly thaw the pipe. Tomorrow I will be at a meeting with the head of the district, I will clarify the issue. For myself, I see one option – using a puncture method to bring water underground. Then there will be a result and no problems with the house,» Chizhov specified.
He noted that if they thaw the water now, before the upcoming frosts, it will freeze again and the task will turn into a futile effort.
A 45.RU correspondent called the administration of Shchuchansky District to get a comment on the situation with the house, but no one answered the call. An editorial request has been sent to the administration; if a response is received, we will publish it.
