Vistula River – open for business

The Polish government has given the go-ahead for the development of the Vistula River to be a major European navigable waterway.
Vistula River - open for business

Vistula River, Warsaw, Poland (Răzvan Băltărețu, CC BY-SA)

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda signed the UN Economic Commission for Europe’s AGN European Agreement on main inland waterways of international importance. This gave the green light to the development of the Vistula River, Poland’s central artery to carry river traffic.

Vistula-the Queen of Polish rivers

The AGN is a 1996 United Nations document, The European Agreement on Main Inland Waterways of International Importance, that aims to develop a network of European waterways, ‘E- waterways’, linking rivers and canals across the whole of Europe and into Belarus and Ukraine and Russia. The bulk is concentrated in the Western Europe. The statement of principle emphasizes the important role of inland water transport, which – in comparison with other modes of inland transport – has economic and ecological advantages and offers spare infrastructure and vessel capacity and is therefore capable of lowering social costs and negative impacts on the environment by inland transport as a whole. The length of the network measures 27,000 kilometers and 37 countries.

The report sets out the principles: in order to make international inland water transport in Europe, including transport by sea-river vessels using coastal routes, more efficient and attractive to customers, it is essential to establish a legal framework which lays down a coordinated plan for the development and construction of a network of inland waterways of international importance, based on agreed infrastructure and operational parameters.

The Polish sections comprise the E30, E31 and E40. The E30 links Świnoujście, Szczecin and the Oder to Wrocław and Kozle, then (this is the Oder-Danube Connection). The E31 links Szczecin, Westoder to Hohen staaten, and Friedrichsthaler Wasser. The sections are set to cost in the region of EUR19bn.

The E40 is more ambitious and will encompass the Lower Vistula from Gdańsk to Warsaw (773 km), then to Brest in Belarus , Pińsk, then link to the River Dnieper to Kiev and Kherson. A branch downstream of Toruń will head westward and join the E70 to Antwerp and eastward to Klaipeda and the Baltic states. The report stipulates the limitations in terms of draught and tonnage that the river traffic must meet as well as the parameters of the waterway itself.

This is a modern update on the old riverine waterway that linked the rich arable lands of the Ukraine to the first Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, ferrying grain and timber, mainly to supply the population of the rapidly industrializing and imperial states of the Western Europe in the seventeenth century. Also, the Vistula river carried riverine shipping and tourism in the 1920s and 30s. Warsaw has the two defunct ports of Praga and Czerniaków.

Protecting the Queen-the opposition

The project is not without its critics both from official and non-government sectors. The criticism centres on the requirement that a class IV waterway needs to fulfil. This involves widening of the corridor, straightening bends to accommodate barges, altering bridges, building weirs and tiered sluices known as cascading. Furthermore there would be a chain of nine reservoirs along the route that would contain traffic and regulate water flow. Another requirement is the dredging up to 2.5 m of a navigable corridor. Vistula is a shallow, sandy river, with eyots along its course forming natural refuges for birdlife. The Warsaw section particularly illustrates the debate. The left bank consists of a 30 m high escarpment while the right bank consists of an urban Nature 2000 wildlife reservation and a flood plain. The plans to tame the river here would deprive the city of an area of natural beauty but would endanger the city in times of severe flood, such as that of 2010.

Scientists from the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) have pointed out the potential damage to the river valley and waters , disrupting the natural processes of the river and threaten the contiguous protected natural areas of Nature 2000. According to Krzysztof Szpalik, PhD, there are economic as well as environmental damage which have not yet been calculated on a cost-benefit basis. The entire project (three E-waterways) is worth EUR17-21.3bn and supporters claim that it will bring profits of EUR71bn, and the ecological benefits will be counted in lower CO2 emissions, as well as relieving the load on road transport.

Prof. Przemysław Nawrocki of the PAN takes a different position. He says that Poland is unique in Europe in having naturally rich rivers but that are narrower and shallower than those in the West or further east. The Dutch, Germans and French have had their rivers regulated for a long time, therefore have nothing more to protect, he argues.

Warsaw’s right bank, a haven for flora and fauna, will be changed irrevocably. The Oder river will have to be straightened for river traffic, so will the Bug, he adds. Environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace Poland are opposing the project. So the argument over the future of the Queen of Polish Rivers is set to be a royal battle.

Vistula River, Warsaw, Poland (Răzvan Băltărețu, CC BY-SA)

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