Kulikov: Sochi guests and residents should know that potable water is full of guck

Professor Nikolai Kulikov, Doctor of Engineering in speciality "Water Supply and Sewage", author of more than 200 patents on inventions in water usage and a member of the Social-Ecological Board under Sochi Mayor, has stated that water in Sochi is full of dirt, although the local water supply and sewage service is advertising its European level.

According to Mr Kulikov, now even more often faecal streams flow along the streets of the city-resort; the latest accident of this sort was on July 30 in the central street of the resort - the Kurortny Avenue, where a manhole and the storm water drainage got clogged.

He said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that businessmen should have never admitted to the water supply and sewage system; meanwhile, today this service of Sochi is in private hands. The transfer of the Municipal Unitary Enterprise (MUE) "Water Supply and Sewage" to private persons was made under a statement of the city administration.

"Money should be allocated in the city budget on repair and update of the networks, otherwise an ecological catastrophe in Sochi sewer system is inevitable," said the Professor. "As an expert in sewage, I want to add that soon we'll drink water brought by water tanks and wash and bathe in our own excrements. I think that health-resort visitors and city dwellers have the right to know about it; this right has been guaranteed to everyone by the Constitution of the Russian Federation."

According to his story, the new Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov had charged Yuri Palamarchuk, his deputy on housing and communal matters, to address the experts' offers on improving the sewage system; however, for three times in a row this bureaucrat failed to come to the meeting agreed upon with representatives of the public.

Then, Nikolai Kulikov put his ideas about the above Sochi MUE into an article intended for the Mayoralty-supported paper "Sochi News"; however, today, a month later, it is still unpublished.

"The Academy of Sciences had recommended my project to Dmitri Kozak, who supervises the Sochi Olympiad; but the latter dropped it to the Sochi Mayoralty, from where a letter came, inviting me to take part in the tender. And then the tender was won by Rostov-based 'Rostovgiproshakht'," says Kulikov, explaining that the former director of this organization Valery Gurin is now the closest colleague of Victor Kolodiazhny and nowadays - vice-president of the "Olympstroy" Corporation.

Meanwhile, the last Professor's project became the winner and is now implemented in Syrian Damascus. "Foreigners were struck by the water purity that I had demonstrated with my installation. This technology proved to be three times cheaper than the American one, and twice cheaper than the Germans'," said Mr Kulikov.

According to his version, the Academy of Sciences had approved this project, but it lost the tender. "It's no good for businessmen and bureaucrats: they need something more expensive and less efficient. This scheme is now at work here, although the whole civilized world is doing vice versa," the Doctor has concluded.