Chelyabinsk is entering the heating season with excavations and heating systems reaching extreme wear and tear, and workers are fleeing the ChKTS

Experts predict accidents and blame Kotova’s entourage for inaction

Chelyabinsk broke records for the duration of pressure testing. The city’s housing and communal services noted that for the first time in history, hydraulic tests were delayed until the end of September and had already coincided with the beginning of the heating season, which the mayor’s office announced readiness for, despite ongoing excavations. Starting today, the launch of boiler houses that supply heat to residential and social facilities begins; officials expect to complete the connection process within a week. According to industry experts, entering the new heating season will not be easy, and winter can bring many surprises associated with large-scale network failures and outages. The reason, as our interlocutors say, is the extremely high degree of deterioration of the networks, reaching, according to various estimates, up to 90%, as well as the “lack of planned overhauls for many years.” Today, in fact, there is no one to carry out this work: the municipal unitary enterprise “ChKTS” responsible for the heating networks is experiencing an acute shortage of personnel, which this year forced the authorities to hire additional teams to prepare the system for winter. And the responsible officials remaining in the mayor’s office “are more busy trying to survive under the new government or find a backup option.”

Resource supply organizations and management companies of the capital of the Southern Urals this week received schedules for connecting facilities to heating, but the mayor’s office expressed the wish “not to delay the supply of heat, but, if possible, to provide it ahead of schedule.” In addition, speaking at the staff meeting, acting. The head of Chelyabinsk, Alexander Astakhov, instructed his subordinates to “concentrate on restoring hot water supply where it is necessary.”

The mayor’s office did not specify how many facilities currently lack hot water supply.

“It’s hard to say what will happen. Most of the houses received certificates of readiness. There are about 40-50 apartment buildings left in the Leninsky and Traktorozavodsky districts, where the basements are flooded, despite the fact that at the end of August there were several hundred of them. For each such house, they look at options for starting heat. But the problems on the networks have not gone away, and the start of the heating season is unlikely to be easy,” – the interlocutor at the mayor’s office shared his thoughts.

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Complaints about long-term hot water outages are still received by the city housing and communal services department and appear on social networks. Not only residential but also social facilities are left without hot water supply. Particularly many complaints about protracted pressure testing come from the North-West, despite the fact that the housing stock there is the newest.

“The fact is that many houses were built as compact buildings and connected to old networks. They take money from developers for connecting to heating networks and water supply systems as if for connecting to new networks, as required by law, but in fact, no one is laying new networks, and the old ones cannot withstand the load,” – explain industry experts.

In the summer of 2024, during the period of hydraulic tests on the networks of the municipal unitary enterprise “ChKTS”, 2276 damages were identified, for comparison, in 2023 there were 2105, in 2022 – 1850. The number of damages to municipal networks that could not be repaired has also increased. by the end of summer – 582 versus 297 and 148 in 2023 and 2022, respectively. By mid-September, there were about 400 unrepaired damages, and 264 houses without hot water (in 2023, during the same period, only 2 houses remained without hot water).

As a result, MUP “ChKTS” failed to obtain a winter readiness certificate on time. The inspection report dated August 20, 2024, which was at the disposal of the editors, contains information about a huge number of violations. In a number of areas, heating networks have not been replaced, and branches that have exhausted their design life have not been diagnosed in order to determine their additional service life and develop measures to ensure their reliable operation. Landscaping at the excavation sites has not been restored for years.

In addition, it follows from the documents that during the pressure testing of the ChKTS municipal unitary enterprise, the networks were not tested for the maximum coolant temperature (130 degrees), as well as tests were not carried out to determine the heat losses of the Southern zone.

“The leak in the heat supply system exceeds the maximum permissible values; an impressive volume of water leaks into the ground from the pipes, which, of course, prevents the start of hot water supply and, accordingly, the start of heat. The reason is the general deterioration of heating networks, the major repairs of which have not been carried out for several years, and the constant “patching of holes” only worsens the situation,” – says one of the utility workers.

This year, in order to rectify the situation that threatened the city with disruption of the heating season, the administration had to hire additional temporary crews. At the enterprise itself, according to interlocutors at the mayor’s office, there is an outflow of professional personnel due to low wages. According to data as of the end of September, the total staffing of the MUP “ChKTS” repair personnel was 64% of the norm, including just over half of mechanics for servicing heating networks at the enterprise, welders – 69%, which is clearly not enough for normal operation and performance of the required amount of work.

Last winter was rich in accidents on the networks of the municipal unitary enterprise “ChKTS”, and experts predict that the situation will worsen

Let us remind you that this year, due to the crisis situation, it was decided the decision to lease part of the networks of the municipal unitary enterprise “ChKTS” to JSC “USTEC-Chelyabinsk”, which is steadily investing in updating the infrastructure. However, according to Pravda UrFO’s source in the Chelyabinsk administration, the lease agreement between USTEK-Chelyabinsk and MUP ChKTS was signed only on September 27. And while the power engineers cannot begin work, it is necessary to sign property acceptance certificates and receive a tariff. In turn, the municipal unitary enterprise “ChKTS”, according to the agency’s interlocutors, stopped preparing for winter in the spring of 2024.

“USTEK-Chelyabinsk has already sent a tariff application to the Ministry of Tariff; it is expected that a decision on this issue will be made on November 1. Only after this date will the company be able to begin any work. The situation is complicated by the fact that in November the heating season will be in full swing, and this imposes significant technical restrictions on repairs. The situation looks catastrophic. In fact, a repair campaign has not been carried out on ChKTS networks for at least two years; the most problematic area is the north-west of Chelyabinsk”says the insider.

According to the municipal expert, “the last time the municipal unitary enterprise was engaged in work under the management Romana Shershneva in 2022. In 2023 his place was taken by Dmitry Mukhina person from the team of the ex-mayor of the city Natalia Kotovaafter which the enterprise’s activities stopped.”

Melissa “Mel” Carter

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