Engineer I. G. Rubinshtein

Major Issues in Water Consumption by Urban Populations

I

Our medical and engineering communities are insufficiently informed about the state of water supply and sewerage in the USSR. Local sanitary inspection authorities, regarding the protection of the quality of water supplied to the population as their principal task, do not pay adequate attention to general questions of water supply associated with its expansion and with ensuring a sufficient quantity of water for the population, still less to the long-term development of water supply systems in populated places. The same can be said of the sewerage of populated places.

Water supply and sewerage services are fragmented, under the authority of various central and local organizations, and unified neither technically nor administratively.

Water supply systems are under the authority of:

a) municipal authorities—those of cities and settlements;

b) industry—people’s commissariats, chief directorates, trusts, or individual industrial enterprises. The management of industrial water supply systems is fragmented and decentralized: some serve only their own enterprise, while others also serve the surrounding population;

c) transport authorities: as a rule, these systems serve the needs of transport and only to some extent those of the population living nearest railway stations, primarily transport workers;

d) agriculture: state farms, collective farms (relatively few in number), small rural settlements, and so forth.

Such diversity and the differing administrative subordination of water supply enterprises cannot promote a unified direction in their development.

The same must be said of enterprises providing sewerage for populated places, with the qualification that there are several times fewer sewerage systems than water supply systems in the Union.

Another consequence of this situation is that we lack sufficient information about the state, growth, and development of water supply and sewerage systems in the USSR. The limited information collected by statistical agencies is insufficient for assessing the state of water supply and sewerage throughout the Union, still less for directing this field.

Below we present some data characterizing the state of water supply and sewerage in the cities of the RSFSR, that is, the enterprises under the authority of municipal bodies.

These data are based on prewar reports. Wartime conditions have left their own particular mark on the operation of these enterprises, one that is not representative of their normal state or future development.

II

Before the war, the RSFSR had 612 cities with a population of 36.7 million. Of these, 104 cities, with a population of 19.7 million, had both water supply and sewerage; 196 cities had water supply only, with a population of …

…with a population of 7.5 million; 312 cities with a population of 9.5 million had no water supply; and 508 cities with a population of 17 million had neither sewerage nor a water supply. Cities with both a water supply and sewerage, or with a water supply alone, can be divided into the following groups (Table 1):

Table 1

As Table 1 shows, 32%, or one-third, of the cities of the RSFSR lack sewerage despite having water supplies; many of these cities have large populations, reaching 200,000–500,000 inhabitants. Fifty-one percent of the cities have neither a water supply nor sewerage.

Within cities, not all inhabitants are served by water supply and sewerage. Thus, according to the latest data, the percentages of the population served by water supply are: Sverdlovsk, 80; Kirov, 75; Saratov, no data; Penza, 60; and Molotov, 50. The corresponding percentages served by sewerage are: Sverdlovsk, 60; Kirov, 25; Saratov, 50; Penza, 0; and no data for Molotov.

The use of water supply and especially sewerage can be considered most effective and rational only when residential and public-service buildings are connected to the water and sewer networks. In this regard, it is essential to establish what percentage of existing residential buildings and their residential floor area is equipped with indoor water supply and sewerage. For lack of data, we do not take into account the considerable number of buildings and amount of residential floor area in the privately owned housing stock, and confine our assessment to the socialized housing stock. This is all the more justified because the overwhelming majority of buildings in the nonsocialized—that is, individually owned—stock are not served by a centralized water supply, much less by sewerage.

With these qualifications, we can estimate for a number of cities the extent to which their populations receive adequate water and sewerage services—that is, the extent to which their residential buildings are actually equipped with modern amenities (Table 2).

Even in the largest cities, 50% or more of the residential floor area lacks adequate sanitary facilities: from 34% of residential floor area in Kazan to 46% in Kirov has a water supply but no sewerage. These are unfavorable factors. Finally, from 50% in Gorky…

Table 2

up to 71% (Molotov) of residential floor area is equipped with neither water supply nor sewerage. These distinctly adverse conditions demand special attention in addressing the postwar improvement of cities and other settlements.

A number of estimates show that, on average, in the large cities of the RSFSR only 35% of the population lives in buildings with water supply and sewerage, 15% in buildings with water supply but no sewerage, and about 50% in buildings with neither water supply nor sewerage.

In small cities, the provision of water to the population is even less satisfactory: approximately 22% of the residential floor area of all buildings in the republic is equipped with water piped into the building and 8% with sewerage; that is, approximately 78% of the republic’s population lives in buildings without water supply and 92% in buildings without sewerage.

The remaining residents of those residential areas served by a water distribution network obtain water from street standpipes, known as “kolonki,” installed along the water mains.

This method of supplying water has its disadvantages: 1) the design of the standpipes does not fully satisfy all sanitary requirements and has repeatedly been a matter of considerable concern to the sanitary authorities; 2) obtaining and carrying water from the standpipe to the home requires a substantial expenditure of time and effort, while carrying the water and storing it at home in open or partly covered vessels (barrels, tanks, buckets) do not ensure good water quality; 3) the number of public standpipes in cities is grossly inadequate, with the result that they are far apart and the service radius of each water point is large. In a number of the largest cities, the average distance between adjacent standpipes ranges from 125 m in Tambov and 265 m in Chelyabinsk to 350 m in Molotov, 440 m in Ufa, and 600 m in Novosibirsk.

The average service radius across a number of cities is 240 m; this means that a round trip to fetch water can reach \(240 \times 2\) m in a straight line, or nearly 0.5 km, and more than 0.5 km when travel along streets and roads rather than in a straight line is taken into account.

On average, one water point in these cities must serve 350 people in Tambov, 540 in Saratov, 1,250 in Kuibyshev, 2,400 in Sverdlovsk, and 3,750 in Novosibirsk; across all cities, the average is…

…970 people. One standpipe serves a residential area of 4.8 hectares in Tambov, 20 hectares in Kuibyshev, 40 hectares in Molotov, and 110 hectares in Novosibirsk; the average across all cities is 19 hectares.

The remaining population, living in areas without a piped water supply, obtains water from local sources: streams, bodies of water, and groundwater wells. Most of these sources are unmaintained and do not ensure the sanitary quality of the water.

As noted above, 78% of the urban population of the RSFSR, or 23 million people, live in houses without a piped water connection and are therefore compelled to use water from standpipes or local sources.

III

What is the water consumption of the urban population of the RSFSR?

The total quantity of water supplied to the network is used to meet the following needs:

Under wartime conditions, the proportion of water consumed by industry increased considerably: in 1943 the population as a whole received only 45% of all water supplied to the network for its domestic, drinking, municipal, and household needs, while industry received 55%.

Before the war, the corresponding shares of water consumption were 62% for the population and 38% for industry.

During the war, water utilities were required to increase their capacity considerably; this increase was naturally accompanied by a rise in industry’s share of total water consumption. In large cities, water-supply capacity in 1943 was on average 60% higher than in 1940; over the same period, water consumption by the population increased by only 15%, while industrial consumption increased by 132%.

An exact calculation of average daily water consumption per inhabitant is impossible because precise data are unavailable on the number of people who actually use piped water. The average daily consumption must therefore be calculated on the basis of the republic’s total urban population, regardless of whether it is served by a piped water supply or uses water from local sources.

On this basis, we obtain the figure normally used in calculating water consumption.

The data given below for average daily water consumption are gross figures calculated per inhabitant; it should be borne in mind that only part of this water is used to meet the needs of the population itself.

water (a certain percentage), while the remainder goes to meet the needs of industry. Per capita water consumption (daily, in liters) is shown in Table 3.

Table 3

This table reflects the influence of Moscow and Leningrad, whose inhabitants receive considerably more water per day (236 and 217 liters, respectively).

If Moscow and Leningrad are excluded, average water consumption per inhabitant is 42 liters/day, of which the population receives 26 liters/day to meet all its needs; consumption of 50 liters/day per inhabitant in large cities with sewerage systems is considerably below the design standards used.

In some cities, this consumption is somewhat higher, but still falls short of the design standards, as can be seen from Table 4.

Table 4

In other cities, this consumption is much lower (Table 5).

Table 5

The war affected total water consumption per inhabitant differently in different cities, depending on local conditions and the ability to meet the needs of the local population, the population evacuated to the city, and industry.

Table 6 presents changes in the operation of water supply systems as percentages, relating the figures for 1943 (\(a\)) to those for 1940 (\(b\)), i.e., \(\frac{a}{b}\%\):

Table 6

We see that, with the population 36% higher than in 1940, total water consumption rose by 60%; of this, water consumption by the population as a whole increased by only 15%, whereas industrial consumption increased by 132%. In every city, the growth in water consumption by the population lagged behind the growth in industrial water consumption.

Daily water consumption per inhabitant changed substantially in 1943 compared with 1940.

Consumption per inhabitant (liters per day) is shown in Table 7.

Table 7

We observe:

a) an overall increase in the average daily water consumption per city inhabitant (to an average of \(95:82=115\%\));

b) a substantial decrease, except in two cities, in water consumption for the needs of the urban population itself (domestic, drinking, and municipal uses);

c) a substantial increase in average water consumption for industrial needs in all the cities listed.

Sanitation and hygiene professionals will need to take a particularly active part in the postwar expansion, reconstruction, restoration, or construction of water supply systems, bearing in mind the need to reconcile the interests of the population with the growing interests of industry in cities.

In this connection, it should be recognized that a relatively small number of industrial enterprises require treated water of good sanitary quality for production, including those in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Research, municipal, and industrial organizations should therefore address the question of a rational, integrated solution for the coming years that reconciles the interests of the population and industry in water supply and, correspondingly, sewerage.