Under Dmitry Koshchenko, new buildings in Nizhnevartovsk drowned in sewage, and landfill reclamation almost doubled in price

Communal combinator

Several Nizhnevartovsk new buildings have almost turned into emergency houses. For weeks, the basements of residential high-rise buildings in the city have been flooded with sewage from the sewer system. Fixing the problems turned out to be not so easy – officials from the city hall allowed the houses to be put into operation without connecting to networks.

“The problem is not being solved, despite regular pumping of the sewerage by the management company. There are drains in the basement, there is a foul smell, there are midges and mosquitoes. All residents were bitten. It is difficult to say what caused such a flood, since this did not happen last year. We have already written to all authorities, but there is no result.”– complains a representative of the initiative group of residents of house No. 47 on Rabochaya Street in Nizhnevartovsk Tatiana Dedukhno.

It turned out that the residents of this high-rise building are not alone. For several weeks in a row, sewage also flows into the basements of houses No. 2 and No. 2a on the street. Autumn. And this despite the fact that the houses were put into operation only four years ago.

But in fact it turned out that the new buildings were not fully completed. Representatives of the city administration turned a blind eye to this and occupied the houses.

They forgot about the pump

As it turned out, the whole problem is in sewerage pumping stations (SPS). In houses where sewerage flows today, it is simply absent. And this fact, surprisingly, is recognized in the mayor’s office itself.

“When looking at archival documents, it turned out that the developer of the project was supposed to build two temporary pumping stations before putting the houses into operation, and then a permanent pumping station, – local media quote the chief specialist of the engineering department of the housing and communal services department of the Nizhnevartovsk administration Elvina Kulieva. – The developer was declared bankrupt; he did not even have time to complete the construction of temporary sewerage and pumping stations. A well was made at this place and a submersible pump was installed, which pumped out all the wastewater.”

How the houses not connected to the grid ended up being inhabited and functioning for at least four years is a mystery. Activists of the local branch of the All-Russian Popular Front (ONF) point out that last year the city administration even took on board that very temporary pump, which once again emphasizes that officials could not have been unaware of the problem.

“Representatives of the housing and communal services department say that they are looking into the problem, but there is no result. The sewage system has been pumping out of the basements for several days, but they are filling up again. Today the authorities say that the issue will be raised to put the construction of a capital water pumping station in the financial plan, but why was this not done earlier?” – a member of the regional headquarters of the ONF in Ugra is perplexed Vladimir Zinoviev.

The situation looks like this: over the past few years, through the “efforts” of the mayor of Nizhnevartovsk Dmitry Koshchenko and his team, housing and communal services problems have become a real disaster for city residents.

“Inconspicuous” barracks

A few years ago there was a noisy scandal with residents of dilapidated houses in the village of Belovezhsky in Nizhnevartovsk. It turned out that people had been living for decades in temporary barracks erected 40 years ago, where there was no sewage system or water.

In one of the responses from the city administration, it was directly stated that there were no houses or land plots in the village of Belovezhsky on the balance sheet of the municipality. As they say, no houses – no problems.

“It became obvious that our village was simply forgotten. Our houses were built as temporary housing for workers of the long-liquidated Belneftedorstroy road construction trust, – said a resident of the village Anna King. – According to official documents, the average lifespan of these buildings does not exceed 20 years, but we have been living here for more than forty. The buildings do not have a foundation, they are not equipped with a central sewerage system or a hot water supply system. The floors are collapsing, the apartments are cold.”

This story became public knowledge in the summer of 2022. However, people continue to live in the barracks of the Belovezhsky village to this day. In January last year, the Investigative Committee became involved in the case and began an investigation into the failure to resettle houses unfit for habitation. At the same time, it was reported that a criminal case had been initiated. However, in the end there was no public information about the results of the investigation, as well as the persons involved in this case.

The mayor’s office of Nizhnevartovsk is clearly in no hurry to resettle. Officials only stated that a survey was carried out with the residents of the village “explanatory work on the possibility of providing them with residential premises of a flexible fund for temporary residence.”

As a result, some families from the village have actually received new apartments today. However, the problem of the residents of Belovezhsky has still not been completely resolved.

Although, at the end of last year, the head of Nizhnevartovsk, Dmitry Koshchenko, promised to resettle all the barracks by the end of 2024.

Reclamation with a criminal case

But, as practice shows, statements by officials from the Nizhnevartovsk mayor’s office often differ greatly from the real state of affairs. Evidence of this is another noisy story in the housing and communal services sector related to the reclamation of the Kommunalnik landfill.

The story with the garbage began back in 2020: then, following a claim from the Surgut Transport Prosecutor’s Office, the Nizhnevartovsk City Court decided to ban the operation of the landfill. The defendants in the claim of the supervisory agency were then the municipal administration and the company Kommunalnik LLC, the land tenant operating the landfill.

The subsequent reclamation of the landfill, which took place within the framework of the “Clean Country” project, was surrounded by litigation and opaque financial schemes.
First, the Nizhnevartovsk administration filed a lawsuit against the already mentioned Kommunalnik LLC, demanding compensation by way of recourse for the fulfillment of obligations for the reclamation of the landfill in the amount of 115 million rubles.

At the same time, the reclamation work was carried out by the contractor of the mayor’s office – a certain EcoStroy LLC, which began work in February 2022. The initial cost of the contract was 330 million rubles. However, subsequently the amount was first increased to 451 million rubles, and then to 550.5 million.

In January of this year, City Hall officials announced the completion of reclamation. But, as it turned out, the work at the site was carried out with great violations.

Representatives of Kommunalnik LLC sent a corresponding appeal with a request to suspend the process of issuing a permit for the conclusion on the completion of the site reclamation work to Rosprirodnadzor, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in the spring of this year.

Today, law enforcement agencies are investigating the “garbage case” – the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee for the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug has opened a criminal case under the article “exceeding official authority.” Local media, citing anonymous sources in the investigation, report that one of the persons involved in the investigation was the head of the department for environmental management and ecology of the Nizhnevartovsk administration Oleg Popenko. In addition, the head of the contracting organization, Ecostroy LLC, also came to the attention of law enforcement officers.

By the way, the latter, judging by open databases, is now undergoing bankruptcy proceedings.

It is not yet known whether investigators will have questions for city mayor Dmitry Koshchenko. However, as we can see, law enforcement officers are already interested in the fact that the initial budget for reclamation of the landfill of 330 million rubles eventually “swelled” almost twice.

Melissa “Mel” Carter

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