Yearly estimations vary from thirty to a hundred billion roubles, he added. Mr. Khamitov finds the latter figure bloated-damages never get over a forty billion mark, he holds.
Russia does not belong to the worst inundation-affected areas. Its south is in the worst situation-the North Caucasus and the Krasnodar and Stavropol territories in the country's European part, the South Urals, and Siberia's south.
South Russian highlands are in for more snowfalls quite soon, warn weather experts. The alarm has come from the Russian Hydrometeorological Committee, Mr. Khamitov went on.
4.5 million of Russians live close to dams. A major part of those dams are all right, but many demand thorough monitoring and maintenance. Take Ulyanovsk, provincial and industrial centre on the Volga. It has a neighbourhood of 40,000 in the lowland, next to a dam built back in the 1950s. The area is too dangerous to be populated. "One oughtn't to build anything at all in places as that," stressed the federal officer.
Russia owes a greater part of flood damages to bridges built on inappropriate spots, and residential houses, country cottages and hikers' retreats in river estuaries and close to dams.
"It is pointless to fight elements. One has to quit flood-endangered areas or build huge hydrotechnical projects at exorbitant expenses," he said.
Meanwhile, a mere 20 per cent of water resource fees was spent on flood protection within preceding years.
Federal water taxation enters into force, January 1, so capital investment in the water economy is expected to increase tenfold next year, reassured Mr. Khamitov.
South Russian rivers may dangerously flood with bad residue within upcoming days, warn experts of the Ministry for Emergency and Calamity Relief, as ministerial PR said to Novosti.
The water level in rivers in the southwest and southeast of the Kuban basin is expected to rise to an alarming point, and even disastrous in some places, warned our informant at the ministry.
Bad residue is also expected in the North Caucasus-the Stavropol Territory, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Karachai-Circassia and North Ossetia.
A flood came to Adyghea, another of Russia's North Caucasian republics, December 1, with a thaw that promptly followed blizzards. 33 settlements were flooded in six districts, with 934 residential houses of 4,347 lodgers. The flood damaged highways along 73 kilometres, seven bridges and twelve pond dams, said the ministerial spokesman.
