Liberec Region in Czechia wants to use Turów Fund to pay for household connections to new water mains

The Liberec Region wants to use the Turów Fund to pay for household connections to new water mains under construction, and possibly to fund new boreholes or deeper wells where installing a connection would be too expensive. The region provisionally estimates the costs at 10 to 15 million crowns, Governor Martin Půta (Mayors for the Liberec Region) told the Czech News Agency (ČTK) today during a special inspection day at the construction site of a new water treatment plant in Machnín, near Liberec.

„We are arranging alternative water supplies to replace sources people originally had of their own, mostly wells or boreholes. As groundwater levels fell, those wells ran dry. We don’t want people to bear the costs of alternative supplies themselves, so we looked for a way to pay for household connections,“ Půta added.

According to the governor, the support will go to the towns of Hrádek nad Nisou and Chrastava, which will build the connections and then transfer them to residents. „This will apply not only to existing properties, but also to properties that have the necessary building permit by a specified date. Those who do not have one will have to connect to the water main in the future at their own expense,“ Půta said. In some places, however, a connection would be too costly, so the region is considering how to support a new borehole or a deeper well, which would cost less than, for example, a kilometre of pipeline.

The Turów Fund was established under a Czech-Polish agreement on addressing the impacts of coal mining at the Polish Turów mine near the Czech border. Three years ago, Poland and PGE, which owns the mine and the neighbouring power plant, therefore paid the Czech Republic 45 million euros (around 1.13 billion crowns) in compensation for damage. Of this, 35 million euros (880 million crowns) went into the Turów Fund’s transparent account, which is administered by the Liberec Region. It currently holds almost 762 million crowns, including interest. Půta also wants to discuss support for household connections from the fund with the Polish side.

The fund’s money is intended for projects that will provide residents of border areas in the Liberec Region with drinking water, which they lost because of mining. The largest projects so far are a new water treatment plant in Machnín and a connecting pipeline, being built by the North Bohemian Water and Sewerage Company (SVS). The two projects will cost a total of 470 million crowns excluding VAT. In addition to a grant from the Turów Fund, the Operational Programme Environment is also contributing to their financing.

The new treatment plant and connecting pipeline should ensure an adequate supply of drinking water for around 30.000 residents in the Hrádek nad Nisou and Chrastava area. Work is progressing faster than expected, according to SVS Chief Executive Bronislav Špičák. The plant will therefore be completed this summer, and trial operation could begin in the autumn. Nearly 12 kilometres of the pipeline is already half complete, and the entire project should be finished at the end of next year.

Hrádek nad Nisou and nearby Chrastava are building new water mains at a cost of around 200 million crowns. Work in the Václavice area is also progressing faster than expected, according to Hrádek Mayor Pavel Farský (Hrádek Needs Change!). „If everything goes well, we’ll finish this autumn. Because we were able to switch some works from excavation to trenchless technologies, we didn’t have to disrupt as many roads, and the work is going faster,“ Farský added.