I give you water!

Yuri Luzhkov ordered his subordinates to defend Moscow's rights to rivers and reservoirs

The political unity that United Russia was able to achieve in the State Duma led to the fact that the party in power began a serious struggle with itself. Yesterday, Yuri Luzhkov, being one of the leaders of this party, once again sharply criticized the federal government, doubted the viability of the Russian parliament, and also reprimanded Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Artur Chilingarov. The reason for such a sharp political demarche at yesterday's meeting of the city government was a discussion of the problems of developing the city sewer network.

Modern treatment facilities and filter presses for treating wastewater from feces, which the head of Mosvodokanal Stanislav Khramenkov tried to tell city officials about, were not of interest to the mayor. While preparing for the meeting, Mr. Luzhkov unexpectedly discovered that amendments to the Water Code of the Russian Federation, already adopted in the first reading by his party comrades, give private individuals the right to privatize water bodies.

The mayor couldn't believe his eyes. “That is, with the acquisition of the right to purchase water bodies, we are moving into a regime where water as a mineral resource in a number of cases is no longer the property of the state? The city receives water from nine large reservoirs located at a distance of up to 350 kilometers from Moscow, and we will now have to enter into agreements with their owners on the sale of water that is not the result of their efforts, work and care!” - Mr. Luzhkov was indignant. Struck by such blatant injustice, the mayor raised his tone: “This water, which appears from the Lord God, is a resource that certainly belongs to society, and not to some private owners! Water is not even oil! Scary things are happening! We'll get air sellers soon. It's the same thing. Someone will buy airspace and say: the breeze has blown in your direction, fellow Muscovites, pay me for my air, which has passed from me to you.”

Present at the meeting of the Moscow government, State Duma Vice Speaker Artur Chilingarov, who headed the “Capital” deputy group after Georgy Boos moved to Kaliningrad, tried to stand up for his legislative colleagues. Referring to the fact that the government was preparing the bill, and there are no experts on water issues in parliament, Mr. Chilingarov proposed preparing an appeal from the Moscow government, which would reflect the position of the mayor’s office. This, he said, needs to be done immediately, because the lack of specialists in water bodies did not prevent legislators from considering the government’s proposals at a meeting of the State Duma Committee on Natural Resources and recommending them for adoption. In the mouth of the former polar explorer, this meant that deputies from Moscow also voted for the government amendments that so outraged Yuri Luzhkov.

The mayor did not expect this from his party comrades. “What, don’t you have people in the Duma who understand how dangerous this is?” - he attacked the vice-speaker of the Russian parliament. Stressing that specialists from the Federal Water Resources Agency are also against the government’s draft of the new Water Code, Yuri Luzhkov made it clear that he does not believe in the naivety of the State Duma and, at the first opportunity, is ready to remind the United Russia members working there everything. “Look at what they are doing on the gambling business, on vodka, on other issues, what decisions they are making on radical liberalization of the economy! Soon things will come to the point where, as a result of the adoption of this Water Code, we will have the owner of the Volga or Yenisei,” the mayor continued to be indignant, demanding “to immediately raise objections to such a Water Code up to the level of the president.”

However, having defeated the government’s attempt to privatize water bodies, Yuri Luzhkov made it clear that he understood the logic of the authors of the bill. Having instructed his deputies Pyotr Aksenov and Anatoly Petrov, as well as the head of Mosvodokanal Stanislav Khramenkov to immediately prepare amendments to the Water Code, Yuri Luzhkov specified the task for them: “All sources of Moscow’s water supply, at best, in the right way, should belong to the city.”

Alexander GUDKOV