Residents of St. Petersburg Kolpino sound the alarm and share photos of the sharply shallowed Izhora River. The reason that the water left the reservoir was an accident on the dam. The level dropped by at least one and a half meters.
The river became shallow quickly, in about 12 hours. All because of the discharge of water from the Izhora pond. This is how the big river flood is called in Kolpino. In the 18th century, it served as a reservoir. There is a dam on it, which fenced off the Izhora factories from the water for almost 300 years and now it started to leak.
Igor Klavdiev, Deputy Director of the St. Petersburg State Treasury Institution "Lenvodkhoz": “There is a hole where water gushed. This dam was built in 1722. It just happened because of physical wear and tear."
An amateur video captures a waterfall in one of the shops of the Izhora factories. The water, breaking through the back wall, rushed further to the lower basin, which used to receive water from the plant's hydroelectric power station. It was dismantled in the middle of the last century, but the construction of the water supply system to the hydroelectric power station of the 18th century was not touched.
But the cause of the flood is on the other side. The weak link of the dam was the historical gates, which were battened down as unnecessary during the Soviet era, but never reconstructed.
Water was urgently drained from the reservoir after the dam gave a leak. The sluice was closed back a few days later, when they finished filling the hole in the gate. During this time, not only Izhora dried up, but also its tributaries.
The administration of the Kolpinsky district explained: in order to seriously clean up the bottom of Izhora, a project is needed, and its development takes more than one week. Today, the authorities urge the townspeople to take advantage of the unplanned shallowing of the river. Before the heavy rains start, they want to organize a clean-up day to collect garbage from the bottom and clean up on the shore.