Over 100 districts around Poland raise alarm about “water blackout” amid heatwave

As Poland experiences a heatwave, the authorities in over 100 districts around the country have appealed to residents to restrict their use of water as they fear droughts this summer. Temperatures in some places have risen above 35 degrees Celsius in recent days.

In most appeals, municipalities have asked residents to prioritise using water for food and hygiene, and limit watering gardens, filling swimming pools and washing cars.

Some districts – including Miękinia (in Lower Silesia Province) and Wapno (in Wielkopolska Province) – have gone further, already introducing bans on using water from the municipal network for gardening and recreational pools, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

An interactive map created by Sebastian Szklarek, a hydrologist, shows the distribution of these appeals. Szklarek collects the information for his map from local informants.

In recent years, many localities in Poland have struggled to cope with drier conditions, increasing water demand, and long-term hydrological mismanagement.

Last year, there were 300 appeals to limit the use of tap water, following 500 in 2019, according to data from Polish Waters, a state agency. In 2020, the government moved to introduce a special “anti-drought” act to devote over 150 million zloty to improving water retention and storage.

Last year, some Polish cities began pumping water from swimming pools to fight shortages amid one of its worst droughts in over a century.

The Praga district in Warsaw used water from a swimming pool closed due to coronavirus restrictions to wash the streets and water plants. A similar scheme was implemented in the village of Koziegłowy, where firefighters distributed 600,000 litres of water from a pool to residents and farmers.

This year, however, the situation is expected to be better than in the past two years due to the large amounts of snowfall in the winter, as well as copious rainfall in spring, which have lowered the risk of another severe drought this summer, reports Gazeta Wyborcza.

A spokesman for Polish Waters said that the country was “not threatened by a water blackout anywhere” so far this year, but warned that “there may be periodical pressure drops in water supply networks caused by increased consumption when watering home gardens and lawns”.

According to the National Institute for Meteorology and Water Economy (IMGW-PIB), the risk of a drought has been rising due to little rain in June and uneven precipitation in May, as well as a “low awareness of the importance of small retention” among Poles.

Poland faced a heatwave over the weekend, which has continued into the start of this week but is expected to subside in the coming days, according to an IMGW-PIB forecast.

Temperatures reached 35.8 degrees Celsius in Świnoujście on Saturday and then 36.1 degrees in Słubice on Sunday, the highest recorded in Poland so far this year.

Over the weekend, Nowa Biała in southern Poland was devastated by its worst fire in three decades, with a quarter of its houses damaged in the blaze which was exacerbated by the heat and wind conditions, as well as the village’s historic architecture.

Main image credit: Libreshot (under Public Domain)

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.