Taking away water sounds like a very bad idea...
"Always provide your tortoise with a water dish large enough to soak in. Change the water daily and/or if soiled. Often RT’s will use their water dish as a toilet. If you see a white discharge when your tortoise poops this is urates. Urates are excess proteins being excreted. As long as they are coming out looking more like slime they are okay, this means your tortoise is hydrated. If they begin to get pasty or gritty the tortoise is dehydrated and should be soaked more often and also check your substrate to make sure it’s not drying out."
What is your substrate like? It shouldn't be so damp that it sticks to everything, especially the leafy greens tortoises eat. Are you giving him fruit by chance? That will get dirty quickly and it's bad for him anyways.
"Russian tortoise diet consists of all healthy greens. They need a high fiber, low protein diet. Never give your RT fruit of any kind except for Cactus pear. Fruit has the tendency to disrupt the gut flora and cause a parasite bloom in RT’s. Following is a partial list of good greens for your tort.
Turnip greens, dandelion, chicory, endive, escarole, red or green leaf lettuce, radicchio, romaine, mustard greens, collard greens, watercress"
http://www.turtlerescues.com/russian_tortoise_care.htmThat's a care sheet my brother recommended who keeps Russians tortoises. He said it's not complete, but it's a good start.