High waters and expectations

The floods that struck the region in 1997 caused PLN 12 bln in damage in Poland. But these costs are actually still being calculated and now seem to be much higher than that. Has Poland use the time since the 1997 floods wisely? Not all the water retention features planned were built and many of those that were completed only came into use not long before the floods this year. Over that period, governments changed and so did the hydro-defence programmes. The procedures for such large projects are often complex, time-consuming and can face many objections on environmental grounds as well as from residents. “After 1997, four flood reservoirs were built in the Kłodzko Valley [in southwestern Poland],” says Henryk Wolff, the contract director of Porr, a constructor that has delivered projects that include the Roztoki Bystrzysckie dry reservoir commissioned by PGW Wody Polskie and designed by HydroProjekt Wrocław. “It took 21 years from the time of that flood to start c