Odra-Vistula project – flood management in Poland
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Odra-Vistula Flood Management Project for Poland
The generally peaceful River Oder (Odra in Polish) flows through the centre of Wroclaw (formerly Breslau when the region was German). Here it divides into several branches joining four tributaries and several canals (the “Polish Venice”). However, both the city and the river have experienced some painful episodes. During heavy downpours and melting snow upstream, the Oder can surge through the city, as it did in 1997 and 2010.
With a flood control system designed to cope with barely 2,200 m3 of water per second, until the 1997 flood when the flow approached 3,640 m3 of water per second, Wroclaw was unprepared: this flood caused 56 deaths and destroyed more than 700,000 homes, with damage estimated at more than 1 billion US dollars. Hence the Odra-Vistula Flood Management project, which covers 107,169 km² in Poland.
The aim is to extend existing protection systems to people living in defined areas of the Oder and upper Vistula river basins, and to strengthen institutional capacity to mitigate the impact of flooding more effectively. This €500 million project comprises 5 main points.
- Flood protection in the middle and lower reaches of the Oder. This involves optimising both summer and winter flood protection for the towns of Szczecin, Słubice, Gryfino and several other small towns along the course of the Oder. Activities will include the reconstruction of dykes and other bank protection works (reservoirs, parapets, etc.), dredging of the Oder and the canals and port of Szczecin, and river correction works, namely the recalibration and (re)-construction of groins and side dams submerged in the river, the restoration of bends, and bank protection.
- Flood protection of the Klodzko Neisse valley (Nysa Klodzka) to protect the town of Klodzko and the other small towns in the valley, as well as the town of Bardo at the end of the valley.
- Flood protection in the upper reaches of the Vistula to protect the Kraków agglomeration, the Nowa Huta industrial area, the Sandomierz-Tarnobrzeg industrial and agricultural area and certain towns on tributaries in the San and Raba river sub-basins.
- Institutional strengthening and improved forecasting to selectively support the capacity of institutions in priority areas by improving emergency preparedness along the main rivers and their tributaries in southern and western Poland by strengthening forecasting and operational water management capacity.
- And finally, project management and studies.
