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Warsaw sewage scare revisited

30.08.2020 14:02
A sewage treatment system has broken down in Warsaw, the mayor informed on Saturday.
Warsaws sewage treatment plant Czajka
Warsaw's sewage treatment plant CzajkaSource: PAP/Leszek Szymański

Rafał Trzaskowski wrote on Twitter that there had been a failure of a transmission pipe to Warsaw’s sewage treatment plant Czajka.

As a result, untreated waste is being discharged directly into the Vistula River which bisects the Polish capital, as an emergency measure designed to prevent the city from being flooded by a blocked-up sewer system. “To minimise the effects of the discharge, we launched ozone and mechanical treatment of sewage”, Trzaskowski tweeted on Saturday. He asserted that the emergency dumping was posing no threat to drinking water in Warsaw.

A similar system failure occurred at Czajka exactly a year ago affecting collectors sending sewage from the left-bank part of Warsaw to the plant on the right bank.  In reaction, the government commissioned building of an alternative transmission system. The failure was fixed in mid-November at a cost of some 10 million euro.

Commenting on the accident,  Grzegorz Witkowski, Deputy Minister of Maritime Economy and Inland Navigation told public broadcaster Polish Radio on Saturday that “once again we are up against a wall because of Warsaw Mayor and the city’s sewage treatment company.”  He added that state authorities “cannot let an environmental disaster happen” given the water is being polluted in residential Warsaw and  the areas downstream.

Work was under way to make the facility operational again, City Hall said.

(mo)

Source: IAR