Tula water options running dry
Albany Times Union
December 18, 2000The city of Tula, 125 miles south of Moscow, has had its share of hard times since the collapse of communism.
Eight years ago, Albany established an alliance with the Russian city -- whose economy was dependent upon the Cold War arms race -- to help it adapt to a free-market system and to develop an East-West cultural exchange.
This week, two Tula officials and a journalist with the city's principal paper will tour the drinking-water supply and wastewater operations of Albany and Schenectady.
Victor Kindishev, chief engineer of the Water Department; Nikolai Petrov, chairman of the Committee on Ecology; and Oksana Izosina, a newspaper reporter, were greeted by Mayor Jerry Jennings at City Hall on Thursday afternoon.
Tula, which gets its drinking water from the ground, has seen its water supply grow dangerously small.
The only alternative supply for the 600,000 city inhabitants -- the Oka River -- is contaminated with parasites that the existing chlorination process at Tula's water-treatment plant can't kill.
The major roadblock for Tula is money, said David Carpenter, chairman of the Albany Alliance and professor of Environmental Health and Toxicology at the University at Albany.
"It has horrendous problems," Carpenter said, "and since the demise of the Cold War, Tula has been hurt the most because it was so reliant on the military."
James G. Snyder