On Sanitary Measures in Areas Where Virgin Lands Are Being Brought under Cultivation

S. V. Pevzner

Regional State Sanitary Inspector for Novosibirsk Oblast

Following the resolutions of the September and subsequent plenary sessions of the Central Committee of the CPSU, construction began in Novosibirsk Oblast in 1954 on 13 new machine and tractor stations (MTS) and 2 state farms, and in 1955 on a further 15 MTS and 6 state farms. Some projects have already been completed, but most are still under construction. We surveyed several of the new machine and tractor stations. Plans for the settlements attached to the MTS provide for water supply systems and, in some cases, sewerage systems with treatment facilities. The houses have central heating, running water, and sewerage. Workshops and tractor garages are located in the production zone. The new machine and tractor workshops are spacious and well lit, with wood-block floors, central heating, ventilation, and showers. The new workshops are arranged to provide a continuous workflow.

When the regional state sanitary inspectorate reviewed the MTS and state farm plans in connection with their adaptation to local sites, it found serious shortcomings in some of them:

a) A high groundwater table, waterlogged land, insufficient water, and unfavorable terrain;

b) Separation of MTS cultural and community facilities from nearby settlements. In some cases, the MTS production zone adjoins the village residential quarters, while its cultural and community facilities and residential zone are separated from the village;

c) Difficulties in discharging wastewater because the receiving body of water is distant or is used for drinking water;

d) Omission of hospitals and schools from the model plans for the settlements and from the MTS designs. In developing sites selected for construction, geological surveys have in some cases proved inaccurate: no water, or far too little water, was found at the specified depth.

During the approval process, most of the above shortcomings were corrected when the plans were resubmitted.

When approving plans for new MTS and state farms, sanitary inspection authorities often make a serious mistake by underestimating the population that will live within the settlements, using low estimates of family size, and assuming that at least half the workers will come from nearby villages. These estimates often prove incorrect. The result is overcrowding in houses and dormitories.

New state farms are now being established on virgin lands for the second year. Model layout plans for the central settlements of grain state farms provide for the proper functional arrangement of residential quarters, social and cultural institutions, and community service facilities. At present, on household plots, there are being installed

standard houses with one, two, or four apartments, as well as dormitories for single workers and bathhouses, are being built. Unfortunately, hospitals and child-care facilities are relegated to the second phase of construction; these institutions are temporarily housed in premises intended for residences. Tents and various types of trailers resembling passenger railcars are temporarily used as living quarters. The best equipped is the so-called Arzamas trailer, which has central heating, a washbasin, and a shower. It too, however, has a serious shortcoming: during the cold season, under Siberian conditions, it is difficult to heat the interior adequately. The trailer walls are thin and lack effective thermal insulation. Workers prefer other trailers equipped with cast-iron stoves. At the central farmsteads, as newly built houses are put into service, these trailers are used temporarily to accommodate post offices, dining rooms, outpatient clinics, and the like. (On one state farm, the food service facilities occupied two railcars—one for the kitchen and the other for the dining room.) During fieldwork, the trailers were sent to the worksites, to the field camps. The presence of separate compartments for men and women, folding bunks, and a shower makes it easier to clean the premises and allows workers to wash immediately upon returning from work.

As is well known, preventive sanitary supervision cannot be confined to reviewing plans. Equally important is oversight of their proper implementation, ensuring that there are no departures from the approved plan.

Inspections of construction at the machine and tractor stations (MTS) revealed the following departures:

a) replacement of some water sources with others that provide water of inferior sanitary and hygienic quality;

b) use of amenity rooms in the machine and tractor workshops (MTM) as storerooms and other ancillary spaces;

c) construction using standard house designs whose characteristics make them unsuitable for the low winter temperatures of Western Siberia.

To date, none of the new MTS facilities has been formally accepted for operation. At some of them, the MTM have begun operating despite unfinished work, notably the absence of amenity rooms.

As a result of the construction violations identified, the regional state sanitary inspectorate held certain officials accountable, including the directors of the Kochkovo and Veselovo state farms and the heads of construction at the Mel’tushino and Izyrak MTS, among others.

In Novosibirsk Oblast, construction of the Novosibirsk hydroelectric power station reservoir has led, since 1953, to the establishment of a number of new collective-farm villages. Existing villages in the area to be flooded must be relocated, mostly to sites on the shores of the reservoir. The new villages are being built according to plans developed by Giprosel’khoz. These plans comply with the basic sanitary requirements for land-use zoning, including the establishment of a sanitary protection zone between residential and production-and-service areas, the proper siting of residential and public buildings, and so forth.

The regional sanitary organization conducted a sanitary and hygienic survey of homes in the new villages. Their principal differences from the old houses are increased living space, wooden floors, underfloor spaces, and roofs made of two layers of boards. Artesian wells are being drilled in the new villages and, despite a number of difficulties, 27 wells have already been completed and another 19 are nearing completion. The wells are 70–200 m deep; all provide water that meets hygienic standards. In a number of villages, reservoir water is to be used chiefly for the needs of livestock farms, where,

As is well known, the need for water is great. Plans also call for the construction of improved dug wells with mechanical water delivery.

At the Malenkov collective farm in the Novosibirsk district, construction of a piped water supply has begun.

Measures to improve streets, farmsteads and riverbanks remain to be completed, as does the construction of facilities for public use: schools, hospitals, clubs, kindergartens and nurseries, libraries, shops, dining halls, post offices, and so on. There is a considerable need for all of these. There is no doubt that they will be provided in the coming years.

One might have expected that all these aspects of the construction of new settlements, housing and production facilities—both the positive advances in the planning, construction and improvement of rural communities and the serious shortcomings in this work—would be discussed and assessed at the expanded meeting of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, held jointly with the Ministry of Health of the RSFSR in Novosibirsk at the end of March 1955 and devoted to medical and sanitary services for the population in areas where virgin and long-fallow lands are being brought under cultivation. This, however, did not happen.

The series of reports devoted to sanitary and hygiene issues offered no reasonably comprehensive analysis of the construction under way. As for implementation of the proposed measures, it continues to lag because they depend on studies yet to be undertaken.

In his report, “Principal Sanitary and Hygiene Issues in the Planning, Construction and Improvement of State Farms in Areas Where Virgin and Long-Fallow Lands Are Being Brought under Cultivation,” Professor N. N. Litvinov, Deputy Director of the Institute of General and Municipal Hygiene of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, addressed only in general terms such matters as the selection of sites for new state farms and machine and tractor stations (MTS), and the planning, construction and improvement of farmsteads. He did not emphasize the geographical and climatic characteristics of Kazakhstan, Western Siberia and other regions where virgin lands are being brought under cultivation, which determine the requirements for water supply, local building materials, sanitary land improvement and other matters.

Judging by the report, the Institute of General and Municipal Hygiene of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences plans this year to work in Altai Krai on examining and reviewing settlement planning and sanitary improvement projects and on establishing continuing contacts with local planning and economic authorities on these matters. This will, of course, be of great benefit. It must not be forgotten, however, that local work consists only of adapting standard designs developed by the ministries’ design organizations to particular sites. Particularly important, therefore, is liaison with the design organizations of the ministries of agriculture and state farms, which develop standard designs and model planning schemes.

The main shortcomings of the standard designs are the failure to match house wall thickness to outdoor air temperatures in the country’s different climatic zones; the absence of alternative methods for treating and disinfecting wastewater under different soil conditions; and the mismatch between the planned housing stock and facilities for children, cultural activities and everyday needs and the population of MTS and state-farm settlements.

Professor S. I. Vetoshkin presented data from a detailed instrumental survey of new housing in Altai. In his view, favorable temperature conditions have been achieved in standard KSh-type housing. According to our data, based on surveys of a large number of dwellings, these houses in Siberia require additional insulation of attic spaces and additional earth banking around their foundations. Professor S. I. Vetoshkin’s findings are explained by the fact that the winter

The winter of 1954–55 was unusually mild for our climate, and this was reflected in the results of the study.

It was noteworthy that the speaker proposed using the room intended for a ventilated privy as a pantry, while failing to consider the possibility of providing an underfloor cellar for storing food and vegetables, a practice that has long been widespread throughout Western Siberia.

In his paper, “Questions of Agricultural Water Supply in the Zone of Virgin and Fallow Land Development,” Professor S. M. Drachev presented information on the construction of canals, the replenishment of local rivers, and other measures in the Manych and Stavropol steppes. There is no doubt that water-supply conditions in steppe regions are similar to some extent, regardless of their location. Yet it is hardly possible to assert, as the speaker did, that water resources everywhere permit groundwater not only to meet domestic and drinking-water needs fully, but also to be used for irrigating crops.

In Novosibirsk Oblast, labor-intensive work to irrigate the Baraba Lowland has been under way for several years, and similar work is planned in the Kulunda Lowland. The enormous Priobskoye Reservoir will soon be brought into operation; this should provide a reliable source of water for irrigation.

Numerous ponds play a significant role in the water supply and are already used in many cases for agricultural purposes, particularly on virgin lands.

The most desirable course is to use water from artesian wells. As studies of water sources in the southern districts of Omsk Oblast have shown (Professor L. I. Maslov, Candidate of Medical Sciences B. D. Samoylenko, and research associate M. A. Popov), shallow groundwater is often contaminated, has unacceptably high chloride levels, and is highly mineralized. The occurrence of diseases with natural foci is also a matter of great practical importance.

As is well known, bloodsucking insects and ticks that transmit disease commonly inhabit unsettled areas slated for economic development. In Western Siberia, these are steppe and forest-steppe landscapes, where rickettsioses, hemorrhagic fever, malaria, and tularemia are characteristic and where, in certain areas, spring-summer encephalitis also occurs. In recent years, extensive work has been carried out to study these diseases, making it possible to plan and implement broad preventive measures.

The sanitary services in areas where virgin lands are being developed face tasks of exceptional importance: further study and oversight of the construction and improvement of new collective-farm villages, machine-and-tractor station compounds, and state farms, and prevention of violations of sanitary rules in the use of newly built dwellings, water sources, and the like.

Participation in this work will provide sanitary physicians and epidemiologists with valuable practical training.

This will be possible, however, only when we strengthen local sanitary-epidemiological stations by staffing them with bacteriologists and epidemiologists and equipping them with appropriate apparatus.

Research institutes and the relevant departments of medical schools should also be encouraged to take an active part in this work, thereby helping the sanitary services resolve the most important problems of hygiene and epidemiology.

Received July 22, 1955.