vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #153 / Special reports / Reading article...

Retired engineer Alexander Dimeshkin remembers winters when there was so much heat pumped into his house that he would throw open his windows to cool down, though outside temperatures might be no higher than 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

This fall, however, a continuing energy crisis in Primorye keeps Dimeshkin’s window’s tightly shut. As temperatures plummet at night and days remain consistently cold, heat that was supposed to start flowing Oct. 15 still hasn’t been turned on in many apartments. People living in the region -- including Vladivostok -- often don’t have hot water or electricity.

"We didn’t think about such problems twenty years ago," Dimeshkin said. "But now, if there is no improvement in the energy situation, we will simply die."

The crisis has become so severe that foreigners settling here often bypass the entire local system. According to Chad Rintoul, manager of the Vlad Motor Inn, if hotels here want to operate on Western standards, they must have alternate sources of power.

Rintoul hastened to add that his hotel is lucky because it is located in a region without frequent cuts. Even so, the inn heats all the water piped into its hotel itself rather than relying on municipal heating structures, he said.

Though local officials promise that such extreme measures won’t be necessary this year, Vladivostok residents are preparing for a repeat of last winter’s cuts, which sometimes lasted for 15 hours.

It is a region that has enough coal nearby to supply it into the middle of next century, where hot water and heat are unexpected luxuries. Yet its energy problems are as vast as the Russian taiga that dominates the landscape, 4,000 miles from Moscow.

The feud between Vladivostok Mayor Victor Cherepkov and Primorye Gov. Yevgeny Nazdratenko has left the city and krai officials unable to find a solution. Cherepkov recently refused to pay 65 percent of residential heating bills to energy supplier Dalenergo, though a controversial and unclear law apparently requires him to do so. His camp claims that it is not obligated to provide such subsidies, and that city coffers don’t have anything near the 700 billion rubles to pay anyway.

Krai Vice Gov. Vladimir Rud counters that this year’s city budget clearly states that the mayor must pay such funds. Despite their disagreement, however, Rud admits that the krai has not even negotiated with Cherepkov.

"With the strangeness of our Vladivostok mayor, it is very difficult to get things done," Rud said. "To my great disappointment we haven’t gotten in touch with him -- he works in outer space."

Because the energy crisis now affects the entire region, though, Rud believes that local political jousting only masks the bigger problem: When the Soviet Union shattered, the entire Far East was left dependent on extremely expensive coal. Under the Soviet system, governmental planning kept coal transportation costs low, and steady subsidies from Moscow shouldered the cost of inefficient mines and the disposal of coal waste, he said.

Now that Moscow is tightening its belt, the region finds such funding more scarce.

"Until the fall of communism, the state took care of everything," said Yuri Lukhoida, chief engineer of city energy supplier Dalenergo. "But in today’s market economy, we are finding it very difficult to develop on our own because coal mining is so expensive."

Similar state funding cuts to the region’s enormous military complex has left over half the population below the poverty line and unable to pay an electricity rate that is six times higher than some places in Russia. As a result, the region suffers from a "cycle of non-payment," as Lyukhoida describes it. When coal miners strike for six months of back pay, as they did this summer, energy suppliers must conserve what little coal they have -- and cut power throughout the region to avoid falling into greater debt themselves.

To break such a cycle, local officials now frequently run to Moscow for short-term help. The government recently supplied 42 billion rubles to miners in back wages, and has agreed to lower coal transportation tariffs by 40 percent until the first of April.

But these are short-term solutions, and they don’t help the region become more self-sufficient, Rud said. Instead, he is launching initiatives to shut down unproductive mines and make coal prices here more competitive. He said that the krai government plans to issue bonds at the start of next year to dissolve outstanding energy debts.

Lyukhoida, on the other hand, hopes to tap into substantial oil reserves off of Sakhalin island. Within ten years he wants the region weaned off of coal and to begin using fuel oil pumped in from the northern island.

But even he admitted that such goals may take longer to achieve, mostly because hefty projects will require government funding, as there simply is not enough cash circulating in the local economy to pay such bills, he said.

Until that time comes, Lukhoida doesn’t think the region will survive a year without heat and electricity shortages. "We are making progress that allows us to foresee situations like today’s crisis," he said. "But that doesn’t mean an end to power cuts -- after all, this isn’t communism."