PROMORIVER
Existing problems
Regulation of water courses aimed in the past to increase area of arable land. This goal was not totally successful in the project area – big portion of land gradually became too wet to be used for growing crops. Other negative impacts of regulation cumulated in last decades. Water courses lost self-cleaning ability, physical as well as chemical characteristics of water degenerated. The water became colder, with negative impact of local natural swimming pool. The biggest problems of the village are flash floods, which carried mud and muddy water from fields to village and made damage to community and private properties.
Objectives
- Improve flood protection and prevention by environmentally sound measures – increasing water retention, which would keep water during rainy period and gradually give water during droughts.
- Restore self-cleaning capacity of the water course, support cleaning processes by new wetland areas
- Increase coherence of local ecological network, increase biodiversity
- Establish a management, which will have economic contribution for local community (wood from floodplain forest, grass from meadows as a feed for cattle, honey from bees)
Restoration of Confluence of Versuvka and Maly potok, Czech Republic
Case study description
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The project was the rehabilitation of the riverbanks and hydrological and ecological processes of the rivers Granja and Asprela in Porto, Portugal with involvement from the public as well as local authorities, using methodology developed in the Projeto Rios project.
Site description
Project area is located near village of Cehovice in agriculturally intensively used landscape. In the past, both Vresuvka river and Maly potok stream were heavily regulated. Water courses are unnaturally deep, straighten and connectivity between floodplain and river were lost, as well as diversity of morphology. Maly potok suffers from periodical pollution from nearby agricultural facility (pig farm). Project is located on area of 1.4 ha.
Project statistics
Start date: 2010
End date: 2014
Nº of people involved: 10
Partners:
Arnika (NGO), Coalition for Rivers (NGO), Human in Need (NGO), community of ÄŒehovice
Budget: Preparation, project documentation, building permission process: 2,950 EUR, implementation: 79,550 EUR
Location: l ÄŒehovice village, Olomouc province, Czech Republic
Implementation
Project is a part of our long-term activity to initiate, support and implement river restoration projects in the basin of Morava river in Czech Republic. Based on analysis of maps and ownership situation, field research and preliminary negotiation with local authorities, we chose this project as a priority. Small financialsupport from Human in Need helped Arnika to rent a land and develop project documentation. Another NGO, Coalition of Rivers then applied successfully for funding from ERDF, got building permit and in public competition chose building company for constructions. Coalition for Rivers will also take full responsibility for management of new river channel. The project is supposed to be completed by the end of 2014.
Outcomes and success
Within the project, we will create a new channel of Maly potok stream with natural morphology for this type of area (shallow, wide, with meanders), create six pools (two in the channel, four alongside), replace agricultural land with fragments of floodplain forest and meadows with local mixture of grass species (see map bellow).
To see all environmental effects, we will have to wait until project is completed and planted vegetation has grown. Anyway, even now we can say that it is probably the first project of river restoration in Czech Republic fully prepared and implemented by NGOs, including responsibility for post-project management of the area.
Future actions
The project area will be rented by Coalition for Rivers, which will provide, in cooperation with community of Cehovice, the necessary management – reshaping planted forest to achieve diversity not only of species, but also of age of trees, grazing meadows, etc. Together with other area nearby (described in another case study), we intent to gradually create a sustainable part of ecological network, which will combine positive effects for biodiversity and local economy.
Lessons learnt
Within the project, we successfully established communication and cooperation with river management institution (Povodi Moravy), which is the key for success and base for developing other projects in the area. We learn, that in countries like Czech Republic, with dense population and complicated ownership relations, it is sometimes useful to start with analysis of ownership and adapt proposed projects to ownership situation. For larger project then, it would be necessary to think in longer time scale andwith patience use ongoing opportunities to solve ownership problems one by one.
It was already mentioned, that uniqueness of the project in the scale of Czech Republic comes from the key role of NGOs in the process. Within the project, we started to formulate the possible role of NGOs within river restoration movement – we can not only push authorities and lobby for better legislation, but we can also on smaller progressive project show, that it could be done, and, if they are successful, it could encourage more conservative stakeholders (communities, catholic church, forest companies, big private owners) to implement similar projects themselves.
