Residents of Polessk, a town in Russia's Kaliningrad region, have gone nearly two weeks with little to no running water, and the local utility company managing their building says the residents themselves are partly to blame for turning their taps on too often.
The situation came to public attention after the Telegram channel Amber Mash reported on conditions at a building on Suvorova Street. According to the channel, the motor in the pump that carries water to upper floors burned out on August 22, leaving apartments on those floors with almost no water pressure since.
Management company's response
The management company that services the building initially gave residents no comment on the problem, according to the report. A week later, it proposed holding a residents' meeting to decide how to fund a replacement pump costing 25,000 rubles.
The company's director later told journalists he had already bought the new pump with his own money. He said the pump was not the only issue, however.
The director said the building is connected directly to the city water mains, which carry enough pressure on their own to keep taps from running dry. But he said the strainers on the taps in the building are clogged, and he claimed residents turning their water on frequently was also undermining the stability of the pressure.
Background on the region
Kaliningrad is a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, separated from the rest of the country by Lithuania and Poland. Polessk is a small town within the region. Aging Soviet-era water and pumping infrastructure has been a recurring source of complaints in smaller Russian towns.
The Polessk case follows an earlier report that residents in several districts of Yekaterinburg, a major city in Russia's Ural region, had been left without water "indefinitely," according to that report.
