Water maintenance plans are not building reservoirs

The topic of water maintenance plans has resurfaced across the country. For a simple reason – public consultations have just started on 11 documents that indicate where and what will be done on rivers in terms of maintenance work. Are these documents in line with public expectations? How many voices – so many opinions.

The water maintenance plan is about maintaining

Well the name couldn’t be any more literal. A water maintenance plan refers to activities that are defined as just that. Only with this definition most of us have a problem. Why is that? The answer is obvious – has anyone outside the industry, local governments or NGOs even heard of it? I think it’s a waste of time to do a street poll on this issue, since most of the difficult water management formulations have not been heard of by anyone in this country. Is this a pebble in someone’s garden?

No, this is the result of historical ignoring of water management. This has always been the case, regardless of policy or attempts by the administration to raise public awareness. However, returning to water maintenance, it is worth emphasizing what it is. In the pages of Water Matters, at the beginning of last year, after the Polish Water Administration began working on new documents, there was an article by Katarzyna Biegun, who explained it precisely. I recommend this reading for the second time. What is worth quoting again is the sheer scope of maintenance work that is carried out on our rivers and streams. And they are:

• Mowing plants from the bottom and banks;
• Removal of floating and rooting plants in the bottom;
• Removal of trees and shrubs overgrowing the bottom and banks;
• Removal of natural and man-made obstacles;
• Backfilling of bank and bed breakouts and biological development;
• Pumping by removing blockages that impede the free flow of water and removing silt and debris;
• Repair or maintenance of regulatory structures and insurance of water facilities;
• Demolition or modification of beaver dams and backfilling of beaver burrows or burrows of other animals in the banks of watercourses.

That is, the above statement does not include the construction of any hydrotechnical infrastructure, including flood control. I emphasize that carrying out maintenance activities should be justified, preceded by a thorough analysis of needs, and then evaluated in terms of impact on the state and natural resources.

Does this apply to my neighborhood?

My impression is that the Water Law is among other legislation of the same level a hundred times unique – cruel to the reader. Even if one wanted to learn more about water maintenance, one has little chance to do so. The documents themselves, prepared in accordance with the wording of Article 327 of the same law, in a form that would allow them to get through the Government Legislation Center, are simply tabular summaries containing hundreds of records of data. How do I find out if maintenance work will be done on this river that flows in my municipality or beyond my fence?

And well – first you need to determine where this river is located in relation to the unit of Polish Waters responsible for the administration of watercourses. It would seem – porridge with milk, but if you haven’t yet had the need to contact Polish Waters, it is no longer so obvious. Water maintenance plans are prepared in a catchment division, according to the boundaries established for each regional water management board: Bialystok, Bydgoszcz, Gdansk, Gliwice, Krakow, Lublin, Poznan, Rzeszow, Szczecin, Warsaw, Wroclaw.

If you are not sure of the location of the surrounding watercourse – it is worth using the hydroportal, where your neighborhood and this division can be found. In order to facilitate the use of tabular lists of maintenance works during public consultations, a portal has been prepared to present them in an accessible form. You can find it at the link.

Expectations versus reality

Anyone who has encountered a flood or even flooding disaster – regardless of the value of the property involved – generally expects the problem to be moved away, which is hardly surprising. This push-back from one’s plot of land, farmland or other property close to us often means that someone else – further downstream – will experience such a problem. Impounding watercourses beyond the necessary minimum results, even leaving aside environmental considerations, in water flowing faster in the river, often further eroding the banks, which in turn requires another intervention – fortifications. And so the circle closes.

I deliberately leave out the environmental aspect, as environmental organizations are working vigorously to prevent excessive degradation of ecosystems. And that’s a good thing. It is impossible to disagree with a number of these arguments. How, then, is there to be a wolf that eats and a sheep that is whole? It is difficult to have such a situation, unless someone feeds the wolf something else. And what could that be in the case of water maintenance? Nothing more than to make small changes in the development of the plot or field through which our river flows.

Fortunately, there are more and more farms and areas in Poland where instead of cleaning the river of everything in it, river-friendly measures are being implemented and promoted. Which, in the long run, in the face of the country’s worsening drought, produces extremely beneficial results. I will agree that such changes are not possible everywhere. There are and will be places where interference with a watercourse bed or its banks will be necessary. But such conduct should be the exception, not the rule. Therefore, it is worth reading the maintenance plans and expressing your opinion.

Public consultation on water maintenance plans 2025

I always say that public consultations are not just a formality, but first and foremost an opportunity for each of us – from riverside residents to local governments to environmental organizations – to express our opinions on water maintenance plans. This time it’s about the documents for the next few years, so it’s worth knowing what we’ll find in them and whether our area is affected. Another, more direct way to get acquainted with the documents are the consultation meetings organized throughout Poland – you can find all the details about the places and dates on the Polish Water website.

Water maintenance plans – although they sound dry and technical – affect each of us. Public consultation is the moment when we can make a difference, but only if we take the chance. Should everyone take an interest? Yes. Will everyone do it? Probably not. But if we care about good management of Poland’s waters, it’s worth looking at the portal to see what’s really planned. Because if not us, then who?

pic. main: Max Hermansson / Unsplash