In Kowary, at the foot of the Karkonosze Mountains, residents are cut off from regular water supplies. The water in the taps appears only at selected hours and only thanks to water being delivered by tankers. There are more places in this situation.
Local portal 24jgora.pl describes the situation in Kowary as dramatic: “The services are doing everything they can to ensure a water supply, even for a few hours a day, and even that often fails.” Residents have no water for washing or cooking, they can't run the dishwasher or flush the toilet. In one of the housing estates, there has been practically no water for a month now.
The main culprit is drought – due to lack of sufficient quantity rain the water intakes used there dried up. In order for water to be in the network at all, it must be delivered by tankers from other intakes. The city plans to conduct drilling to use new water intakes. However, the area where they would be made is currently being examined. Importantly, underground water resources are also limited and their excessive use may lead to their depletion.
The residents of Świeradów-Zdrój, a health resort also located in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship, also have to deal with water supply interruptions. Interruptions there are less frequent than in Kowary, but the local government has already he appealed to residents to save water “due to the ongoing wave heatwave and the lack of precipitation.”
Too much and too little water
Warnings of heavy rainfall and possible rapid river overflows have been issued for the first weekend of August for southern provinces. At the same time, in parts of Poland – including the south – alerts from the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management are in effect due to hydrological drought. This clearly shows the difficult situation, driven by climate change. On the one hand, we have longer periods without rain, and on top of that high temperatures (July in Poland was on average much warmer than normal), on the other – heavy rainfall in a short time. This is exactly what is forecast for Friday and Saturday.
Intense rain for a limited period can only slightly alleviate the drought – and at most for a short time. Because the water quickly flows into the channels and rivers. A dangerous flood may occur, but after a few days there will be no trace of it and the water level will be low again.
Not only IMWMbut also the state geological service introduces a state of hydrogeological threat for the voivodeships Masovian and Lower Silesia due to water shortages.
What does this mean? IMGW reports a hydrological drought, i.e. low water flow in rivers. The hydrogeological threat is – literally and figuratively – deeper. It means that the level of underground water is decreasing and reaches a warning level. As the geological service explains, local water shortages may appear in shallow agricultural and municipal intakes.
The worst situation is in the Lower Silesian and Masovian Voivodeships, but warning levels of groundwater may be reached in the following voivodeships: Podlaskie, Lubuskie, Kuyavian-Pomeranian, Łódź, Świętokrzyskie, Silesian, Lesser Poland and Podkarpackie.
To deal with this, it is necessary to collect rainwater. Large reservoirs, which may be associated with water retention, have limited utility. An alternative solution is to collect water in the landscape or so-called green retention. These are more natural rivers, more greenery and preventing water from flowing quickly downhill (as happens in regulated rivers and canals).
Climate change is increasing extreme rainfall and droughts
Extreme weather – on the one hand heavy rain, on the other heat waves – are among the effects of climate change predicted by scientists. While the annual rainfall total may not change, its distribution will change: the number of short-term, heavy rainfalls causing flooding is increasing, and droughts are possible in the longer intervals between them. In addition, heavy rainfalls do not counteract drying as well, because the water quickly flows into watercourses.
In a document prepared by the Warsaw City Hall on adaptation to climate change, we read that in the years 1981-2013 “the number of days with intensive precipitation increased and increasingly higher individual precipitation values were recorded”. An example was the downpour in the capital in June 2020, when in a few hours as much rain fell as the average monthly rainfall. In addition, the lack of water retention and urban concreteness intensify the effects of such downpours and contribute to the flooding of streets and buildings. Another example is the Łódź province, which is threatened by severe desertification and, at the same time, floods in the valleys of the largest rivers in the region.
You can read more about the effects of the climate crisis and the solutions we have to fight it in Zielona.Gazeta.pl website.