Our town

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We live in Usinsk. It’s a small town with the population of about 60 thousand people situated near the river Usa in the north-east of the Komi Republic. Usinsk is young it was founded in 1975. It is a multinational town, the people of many nationalities live here - the Russians, the Ukranians, the Tatars, the Komis, the Bashkirs and so on.

The climate is severe, the winter is cold and long it lasts for 6-8 months, the spring and the summer are short and cool.

Usinsk district is rich in oil, so they get oil here. There are many industrial enterprises in it connected with oil extraction, they are «Komineft», «Arkhangelsk Negtegaz» and others. There are some joint - ventures such as «NobelOil», «KomiArcticOil», «KomiQuest» and others where the specialists from Canada, the USA, Great Britain, France work. In autumn 1994 our Usinsk became world - known as the town where the greatest ecological catastrophy took place. The old oil pipeline was broken, a lot of oil and products streamed on and in the ground, flew into the rivers and their tributaries. The news has quickly spread in the world, many foreign correspondents visited Usinsk in Nov

ember 1994. «Green Peace» called this a great ecological catastrophe but our Komi oil bosses called it only a local incident without much consequences. The rescue operation I has been done to clean the banks of the rivers and the nearest places covered (polluted) with oil and oil products. The old broken pipeline was changed with the new one. I think, it’s such an unpleasant event in the life of our town.

As our town is young we have no theatres and museums, historical and memorial places. But we have a cinema, the Palace of Technics a swimming-pool, a hockey stadium, the House for Schoolchildren where there are a lot of different clubs, studios for teenagers and a lot of pupils attend them.

There is also a musical and art school, seven schools, many kindergartens. There is an airport and a railway station and our people can go to Moscow, Syktyvkar, Ufa, Kazan by plane and by train.

Our town is surrounded by forests, there are also small rivers and lakes. Our people like to spend weekends in the forests picking mush-rooms and berries in autumn, skiing in winter and in early spring. Our men and boys are fond of fishing.

As for me, I like my town, it’s so lovely.