Commercial Use
Neva has very few shoals and its banks are steep, making the river suited for navigation. Utkino Backwaters were constructed in the late 19th century to park unused ships. Neva is part of the major Volga–Baltic Waterway and White Sea – Baltic Canal, however it has relatively low transport capacity because of its width, depth and bridges. Neva is available for vessels with capacity below 5,000 tonnes. Major transported goods include timber from Arkhangelsk and Vologda; apatite, granite and diabase from Kola Peninsula; cast iron and steel from Cherepovets; coal from Donetsk and Kuznetsk; pyrite from Ural; potassium chloride from Solikamsk; oil from Volga region. There are also many passenger routes to Moscow, Astrakhan, Rostov, Perm, Nizhny Novgorod, Valaam and other destinations. Navigation season on the Neva River runs from late April to November.
To the west of Shlisselburg, an oil pipeline runs under the river. The pipeline is part of the Baltic Pipeline System, which provides oil from Timan-Pechora plate, West Siberia, Ural, Kazakhstan and Primorsk to the Gulf of Finland. The 774 meter long pipeline lies 7–9 meters below the river bottom and transits about 42 million tonnes of oil a year.
Near the Ladozhsky Bridge there is an underwater tunnel to host a gas pipeline Nord Stream. The tunnel has diameter of 2 meters, length of 750 meters and is laid at a maximum depth of 25 meters.
Neva is the main source of water (96%) of St. Petersburg and its suburbs. From 26 June 2009, St. Petersburg started processing the drinking water by ultraviolet light, abandoning the use of chlorine for disinfection. Neva also has developed fishery, both commercial and recreational.
Read more about this topic: Neva River
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