Mikhail Lapir, an old man with a kindly smile, sits languidly at his large desk in his vast office looking nothing like the Public Enemy No.1 that many Muscovites imagine him to be.


Lapir is the man who orders the hot water to be turned off every summer in millions of apartments leaving residents shivering through cold showers.


"They try to picture me as the vile enemy of all Muscovites for taking away their hot water," Lapir, head of the city energy department, said in an interview. In his own defense he said he was simply the man with the job of enforcing "the price we all have to pay for the very economic and ecologically friendly but also very centralized pipeline system."


Defending the dreaded annual cutoff, he said the repair work was done in the summer because the same pipes are used to bring hot water into heating radiators and that repairs are easier when the heating is off and the soil is not frozen.


Lapir spreads his gloom in stages across Moscow. For example, residents of 522 buildings on the central Moscow streets Sadovaya-Chernogryazskaya Ulitsa, Ulitsa Obukha, Zemlyanoi Val, Pyatnitskaya Ulitsa, Lyalin Pereulok and Pokrovsky Bulvar should be ready to face their fate by July 1. Residents of Ulitsa Gertsena, Novy Arbat, Malaya Bronnaya Ulitsa and Ulitsa Alexeya Tolstogo will be cut off July 23. The hot water is supposed to come back in the two areas July 22 and Aug. 16, respectively.


Under the law, the city may only cut off water in any building for a maximum of 23 days. On day 24 of the cold-water-only regime, residents can file a civil lawsuit, Lapir said. But only two Muscovites took the city to court last year, he added, "probably because people have just lost hope." One case was dismissed but the other plaintiff was awarded damages. Lapir did not recall the amount.


Last summer, many residents of Ulitsa 1905 Goda had no hot water for more than two months due to poor organization of repairs, leading to the firing of several local officials, he said.


Lapir defended Moscow's centralized hot water and heating supplies against the Western system where each house or apartment building has its own boiler.


The centralization, introduced in the 1950s, provides for efficiency and cleaner air, he said.


More than 18,000 kilometers of steel hot water pipes are buried beneath the city, Lapir said. Six thousand of them are mains, while the rest distribute the water between buildings.


"Before the 1950s, Moscow had over 5,000 smaller boilers," said Lapir. "This means that many residents had chimneys sending fumes through their windows."


Russian-style hot water systems are used in several East European cities, including Prague and Budapest, Lapir said.


"Of course they turn off the hot water in Budapest," said Christina Hantushi of the Hungarian Embassy's cultural section. "But it only lasts for three or five days."