Water Supply Services

Categories / City Services/Housing and Communal Services
WATER SUPPLY SERVICES. Since the very foundation of St. Petersburg the majority of the city population had provided their water supply on their own from the nearest water bodies; the residents of places located far from rivers and canals used the services of water carriers (they worked in the outskirts of the city through the late 1920s). They took water from rivers in buckets or with the help of "water-pumps" established mostly near bridges. In 1863 the barrels of different colour were introduced: white for drinking water, green and yellow for domestically used water. For some buildings (Menshikov Palace on Vasilievsky Island, Marble Palace, etc.) the water was pumped from the Neva by wooden pipes. Industrial enterprises were usually situated along the banks of the Neva and other water bodies. In 1846 count Essen-Stenbock-Fermor initiated the building of water-supply lines in Moskovskaya and Liteinaya Parts (the pipes were installed in the area of present-day Vosstaniya St., Tchaikovskogo Street and Italyanskaya Street). The Joint-Stock Company St. Petersburg Water-Supply was founded in 1858. In 1863-64 the Company built the first water-supply system in St. Petersburg (115 km) and ten water reservoirs for the free-of-charge water distribution. In 1873-77, three water stations were built on Vasilievsky Island, Peterburgskaya Side and Vyborgskaya Side. In 1891-93 all the water-supply constructions were controlled by the City Duma. In 1911 an ozone-filter station (built on the site of the former Petersburg water station) with the capacity of 28,300 cubic meters a day (since 1913, 56,000 cubic meters a day) was brought into operation; two-stage cleaning of water was applied there for the first time in St. Petersburg. In 1917 the length of the water-supply network reached 674 km, the water supply amounted to 336,000 cubic meters a day; these figures grew to 1,142 km and 805,000 cubic meters a day respectively in 1941. During the Great Patriotic War in December 1941 through January 1942 due to intensely cold weather many house service pipes and street water-supply networks came out of order. City dwellers got water from street water posts and special water wells, took water in buckets from the Neva, the Fontanka, and the Karpovka. In the summer of 1942 the water supply totalled 499,000 cubic meters a day. All the recovery work in the system of water supply services was completed by 1945. Lenvodokanal territorial production association was created in 1988 (renamed Vodokanal of St. Petersburg State Unitary Enterprise since 1995). In 1990 the length of the water supply network totalled 4,243 km, and the water supply amounted to over 3,000,000 cubic meters a day; in 2001 the figures were respectively 4,656 km (including the length of suburban networks, 1445 km) and 2,688,700 cubic meters a day (including water supply to the suburbs which totalled 397,300 cubic meters a day), per capita water supply (including industrial needs) was 573 litres a day.

References: Водоснабжение Санкт-Петербурга / Под общ. ред. Ф. В. Кармазинова. СПб., 2003.

I. A. Bogdanov. Essen-Stenbock-Fermor, Count
Menshikov Alexander Danilovich, Gracious Prince
Italyanskaya Street/Saint Petersburg, city
Tchaikovskogo St./Saint Petersburg, city
Vosstaniya St./Saint Petersburg, city
Menshikov Palace
Marble Palace
1863