Translated material
Cold War
The St. Petersburg department of Rospotrebnadzor is suing utility companies over hot water
The Office of the Chief Sanitary Doctor stood up for the “reluctant walruses”—Russian city dwellers who are forced to live for weeks without hot water while utility workers prepare their heating systems for winter. At least on the scale of one particular city, the Russians have a significant ally. At the end of last week, the office of Rospotrebnadzor in St. Petersburg filed a lawsuit against two utility companies - SUE TEK SPb and OJSC TGK-1 over "unreasonably inflated deadlines for annual preventive maintenance." In the statement of claim, lawyers from the consumer department refer to the fact that public utilities violated sanitary rules and regulations (SanPiN), which are designed to regulate the “water issue.”Although this document was approved back in 1988 by the chief sanitary doctor of the USSR, it is still in force, and according to it, “during the period of annual preventive maintenance, shutdown of hot water supply systems should not exceed 15 days.” However, in the northern capital, and in Moscow, and in Russia as a whole, this period is on average more than a week. Moreover, utility companies have their own regulations that allow repairs to be carried out within 21 days, and, if necessary, longer. The companies, which now have to sort things out with representatives of Rospotrebnadzor in court, claim that in their work they were guided by the schedule approved by the Committee on Energy and Engineering Support of the Administration of St. Petersburg. In turn, representatives of the executive power of the northern capital explain that planned shutdowns are necessary for preventive repairs of thermal power plants, boiler houses and pipelines, which in most cases are worn out and require careful inspection. And three weeks for such an audit is the optimal period.
The conflict between two regulations will have to be resolved by the court: Rospotrebnadzor, apparently, hopes to prove that sanitary rules should prevail as a normative act at the federal level, and utility companies will counter with repair standards. Be that as it may, the lawsuit from the sanitary department once again makes us think about the degree of elaboration of Russian legislation in the field of housing and communal services.
Until now, relations between residents and management companies - direct suppliers of utility services - remain unsettled. More precisely, they are left to the suppliers themselves. Let us note that currently in federal legislation there is no standard agreement that residents could use as a guide when concluding an agreement with public utilities and in which the parties to the agreement could prescribe the procedure and timing of planned “dehydration.” Let us recall that several years ago representatives of the Federal Antimonopoly Service came up with the idea of adopting such a standard agreement, but this initiative has not yet been continued. They are still trying to fill the gaps in legislation, at least at the regional level. In particular, in April, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov ordered that a draft standard contract be developed as soon as possible between homeowners' associations (HOA) and the management company involved in maintaining the house and the surrounding area. However, HOAs, as a new form of organization of owners, currently cover just over ten percent of apartment buildings in the capital. Most city residents receive the services of DEZ, and the only document regulating their relationship is the payment receipt.