Pond solution: why fences appear on the shores of reservoirs
A group of Volgograd residents recorded an appeal in which they complained about fences that appeared on the way to the pond in the elite village of Latoshinka. By law, access to the coastline should be open, but citizens living in Latoshinka have their own view of the situation: they have been suffering for a very long time because of noisy and not quite sober companies, garbage, periodic fires in the reeds and other inconveniences. Izvestia dealt with the Latoshinsky story, as well as the problem of blocking access to reservoirs, which is common throughout Russia.
What did Volgograd residents complain about?
A video message to the administration of Volgograd was recorded by the initiative group of the Sever cooperative. They claim that residents of the village of Latoshinka in the Traktorozavodsky district of Volgograd (referred to as "elite" in the appeal) have blocked access to the lake and beach, although locals have been using this passage for decades. The initiative group demands to find out on what basis the fence was installed, and refers to the Water Code of the Russian Federation, according to which any citizen has the right of access to the coastline. A little earlier, the chairmen of the Sever, Urozhay-2, Urozhay-3 and Michurinets-7 farms wrote to the prosecutor's office, Rosprirodnadzor and other departments.
The pond appeared in Latoshinka in the middle of the last century on the site of a sand quarry. It quickly became a favorite vacation spot for local residents, but the village and country associations gradually grew. Now almost the entire area around is built up with private houses and cottages. And now, according to the initiative group, fences have begun to appear.
— They started to block it last year, — Fedor Fedosov, chairman of the Sever cooperative, told Izvestia. — But this year, solid fences appeared in the passages that were between the plots. The paths were closed, and there was only a detour to the lake, a very long one. Unfortunately, the residents of the village of Latoshinka do not want to accept that our dachas stood here when their houses did not exist yet, and people always calmly went there to swim.
Olesya, the owner of a summer cottage in the Sever SNT, says that the children have already dug a tunnel under one of the fences in order to use the usual route. But residents are afraid that access to the pond will be completely blocked.
The position of Latoshinka residents
Lyudmila Solovyova, a resident of the village of Latoshinka, emphasizes that a very small part of the driveways was closed — access to literally 1/10 of the pond. These are exactly the roads where people live.
"It's enough for summer residents to walk 100 m and go down another slope," she told Izvestia. — Another thing is that the shore needs to be improved there, and sand needs to be poured in. By the shore, which is located near our village, the residents themselves were doing this.
Lyudmila Solovyova emphasizes that for more than 10 years, residents of the village have been writing to the administration, the prosecutor's office and other departments about their problems and asking them to limit traffic on the streets of Latoshinka, take measures against people who arrange landfills in the coastal area, make noise and set fires.
According to Lyudmila Solovyova, there used to be a small forest around the pond, and it was almost a protected area — nests of marsh turtles were found there, stone martens, muskrats and other animals lived. However, the suburban areas were growing, there were more and more vacationers, and now the situation on the pond has changed a lot. According to her, people in the pond even wash their cars, throw garbage directly into the water, fish with nets, drink alcoholic beverages and make a lot of noise at night. There are constant conflicts with companies that rest on the shore, there have been cases of theft from houses located near the beach, and drug dealers are actively working near the pond. Residents of the village asked to install barriers and forbidding signs on different sections of the village streets: from a ban on entry and a maximum speed limit of up to 10 km/h to a ban on freight traffic — a lot of cars are passing, and teenagers are riding motorcycles and ATVs.
At the same time, residents of the village of Latoshinka say that they independently carry out environmental raids to clean the coastal zone of the reservoir from garbage.
The residents of Latoshinka and the summer residents of the surrounding farming co-ops have a lot of mutual claims. Lyudmila Solovyova claims that there are massive cases of illegal intrusion into the water supply carried out by Latoshin residents, which is why they themselves do not have enough water pressure in the summer. In summer cottages, she continues, all roads are also blocked, but this is considered normal by summer residents.
In turn, Olesya, the owner of the cottage in the Sever Farming Co., claims that Latoshinka residents pollute the pond themselves by putting septic tanks behind fences in close proximity to the water. Summer residents accuse Latoshinka residents of not even taking out their own garbage themselves, but using containers from nearby farming co-ops.
But both of them have questions for the city administration. The pond belongs to the municipality, but officials are in no hurry to deal with it. The reservoir is not landscaped, there is no infrastructure for recreation and rescuers. Lyudmila Solovyova adds that the land plots are cut in such a way that they closely border the reservoir. Fedor Fedosov adds: there is no free land left — all of it has been bought out and construction will obviously continue soon.
The Volgograd administration told Izvestia that on July 3, employees of the Traktorozavodsky district administration conducted a survey of the territory near the pond and found a fence.
"There is no information in the district administration about the availability of a permit for the installation of this structure, the legality of its placement will be reviewed by the administrative commission in the near future," the administration said. — If the owner of the fence does not provide documents confirming the legality of its installation, the owner will be obliged to dismantle the previously installed fence.
At the same time, the administration stressed that this pond is not an official recreation area near the bathing water.
The All-Russian problem
Head of the "Popular Front. Analyst Olga Pozdnyakova emphasizes that every year the prosecutor's office, Rosprirodnadzor and the Popular Front register dozens of appeals across the country in connection with the closure of access to the coastline.
— Among the main formats of restrictions, one can single out the installation of a fence with a guard at the passage — then there is formally a passage; the requirement to pay a sanitary or environmental fee for cleaning; they refer to the prohibition of bathing, which is not a limiting factor for passage; they lease the coastal area, taking advantage of the mistakes of officials. Often in such situations, through the courts, it is possible to achieve the demolition of part of the fence for free access of citizens to reservoirs," she told Izvestia.
She emphasizes that the Water Code of the Russian Federation guarantees every citizen free access to public water facilities and there are no conditions in the law for allowing access only for bathing.
— In addition, it is explicitly prohibited even for owners of adjacent plots to restrict public access to a 20-meter coastal strip to large bodies of water and a five-meter strip to small rivers. Administrative liability is provided for violations, fines can reach 5,000 rubles for citizens, 50,000 rubles for officials and sole proprietors, and 300,000 rubles for legal entities,— Olga Pozdnyakova continues.
Marina Nenarokova, a lawyer and founder of the Natural Code company, emphasizes that the Water Code ensures the right to use the coastal strip primarily from a reservoir. In court, as practice shows, at the same time, the conditions of citizens' access to the coastline are compared: how much have they changed and whether they are inferior in some basic parameters.
"If the site is given over to a recreational project, for technical needs, then the right of citizens to access the coastline will not necessarily be implemented wherever they want," she told Izvestia. — But the court may decide in favor of citizens if they have to walk several kilometers to the shore, and will require the imposition of an easement on the owner of the land to ensure unhindered access.
According to her, such situations are difficult and can be assessed subjectively either one way or the other.
— Therefore, we always recommend that if access to the coastline can be provided, then it should be done anyway, — says the lawyer. — It is clear that in some cases this simply cannot be done for security reasons or legal requirements: for example, if there is a military facility, marina, etc. on the shore. d.
But dense buildings and cottage settlements should not be an obstacle for citizens, Marina Nenarokova emphasizes. These are the problems of territory planning, which are now especially typical for former Ukrainian territories — for example, in Crimea, dense buildings often simply block access to water.
State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin notes that Sochi also has serious problems with access to the coastline.
"For example, there are a lot of departmental sanatoriums and private ones that put up fences and block people's passage," he told Izvestia. — This is one of the reasons why we don't have a real seaside promenade in Sochi, like, for example, in Yalta. At the same time, the fight against fences is met with fierce resistance.
He believes that it is radically impossible to cope with this problem at the level of city and regional authorities — there must be a "solution at the federal level."
Do we need changes in legislation
According to Marina Nenarokova, Russian laws provide every opportunity to maintain a balance of interests in this area, but the issue of using coastal strips has not yet been fully resolved. In order for any recreation infrastructure to appear there, you need to obtain a so-called accommodation permit. However, it has not yet been clearly defined who should manage the coastal strip — the Federal Property Management Agency or municipalities.
But the behavior of people on the coastline is no longer a matter of administration, easement, closure of access to the beach, etc., but a matter of supervisory authorities who have the right to stop illegal actions, she says. However, even in this situation, municipalities can help develop rules for the use of reservoirs and a list of recreational areas. So far, this has been done very little, says Marina Nenarokova.
"Meanwhile, if the rules are set, then a responsible operator appears on the beach, rules of behavior in public places, and patrols are carried out," she says. — Sometimes it is absolutely necessary to restrict people who come with mangalas and alcoholic beverages, so this issue is still for the municipal government, which should deal with this regulation.
Olga Pozdnyakova also notes that there is still insufficient control in this area. Problems with the closure of access to reservoirs, she believes, could be avoided by automatically establishing a public easement on disputed passages, she believes.
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