Yekaterinburg Municipal Council received the final plan for the repairs and replacement of heating mains in the Urals’ capital from the heat supplier TGK-9; this plan is part of the company’s preparations for the heating season 2012/2013.

While the original plan provided for the replacement of 15 km worth of pipelines with the diameters of 500 and 1000mm, the final version covers the repairs and replacement of 18km worth of pipelines.

‘If one compares TGK-9’s last year’s figures and the plans for this year, it’s clear that the volume of network repairs is virtually the same in both cases. I’d like to stress that TGK-9 manages 242km worth of pipelines, of which 41% are engineering infrastructure pieces that are over 25 years old. In 2011, TGK-9 replaced 17km worth of pipelines in Yekaterinburg. Unfortunately, TGK-9 is a profit-making organization, which means the municipality has no legal mechanisms of influencing it. If this were otherwise, the city authorities would insist on greater scale of repairs and replacement on TGK-9’s part,’ says the press secretary for the city council Denis Sukhorukov.