Minsk Engineering Project: New manifolds won’t save Minsk from floods

Manager of Rublyovski shop situated in Nyamiha Valyantsina Ramanauna is used to annual floods. They were ready on Sunday too:

“We were flooded six years ago. Now we are insured against it and we have sandbags. We close the windows and barricade them with sandbags when the water is coming.”

The drugstore Evroapteka situated in the same building is also ready for floods – they take away all the medicines when it starts raining.

The manifolds Central and Nyamiha are supposed to solve the problem of floods for Nyamiha, Internatsyyanalnaya, Revalyutsyinaya, Tolstoi, Svyardlou, Kamslamolskaya and other streets. However, the object is still not finished. The deadlines have been put off several times. Now it is expected be finished by 2018–2020. But it will not help, Minsk Engineering Project warns.

“It costs about 1.7 trillion roubles, we have to buy imported equipment because it is not produced in Belarus. But is it really needed? The collector is necessary only two days a year. What will happen on the other days? Should it be conserved? What will the staff be paid for?” chief engineer of Minsk Engineering Project asked Euroradio.

However, some new districts are also being flooded nowadays. And they were not built half a century ago! Suharava District, the intersection of Sharanhovich and Labanok Streets and of Shyrma and Haretski Street were also flooded. The traffic was blocked for 3 hours there – and these districts are not old.

“It is necessary to study the problem. A precheck is needed – the manifolds may be dirty. Repair works should be conducted more often.”

The new manifolds will not solve the problem of floods in the capital, the chief engineer thinks. They are built... according to the old standards. The norms permit up to three floods a year! It means that floods will still occur.

“The norms were introduced in the 1970s. I started working 44 years ago and these norms were used back then. The branch science should control the norms but there is no science like this in Belarus – it existed in the USSR. I doubt that there may be something like that. This is a world practice:  part of the water goes to the roads and the other part – to the rain sewage system. It is not manifolds’ fault.”

According to weather forecasts, it will be raining for three more days. A heat wave will replace the rains four days from now.