Prague, July 28 (CTK) – An extensive geological survey of drinking water supplies in the Czech territory shows that the groundwater from the Labe Valley may help drier parts of the country in case of a long-term drought, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) wrote on Thursday.
“The biggest usable groundwater supplies per square kilometre are in the northwestern part of the Bohemian Cretaceous Basin where up to several hundred metres deep sources can be found through which groundwater streams in several layers,” said Zdenek Venera, director of the Czech Geological Service that carried out the survey that will soon be completed.
In this region, groundwater flows in long distances from the Lusatian Mountains (Lausitzer Gebirge) to the Labe River (Elbe). The area is situated in the northwestern part of the country and the towns of Melnik, Litomerice, Decin and Ceska Lipa are close to it.
Other significant, though smaller, groundwater supplies are east of Hradec Kralove and in the Broumov area at the Polish border, both east Bohemia, and in the Trebon basin, south Bohemia.
On the contrary, the smallest groundwater sources are in the Dyje-Svratka Valley in south Moravia, hydrogeologist Renata Kadlecova told MfD.
The area from the Austrian border to the city of Brno is the most vulnerable during drought periods because of the intensively used arable land that lowers the amount of rainwater to seep to the underground.
Apart from the islands of Malta and Cyprus, the Czech Republic has the lowest usable fresh water supplies per capita in Europe. This is also why the government decided to map the groundwater supplies in the Czech territory five years ago, the paper writes.
The low water supplies in the Czech Republic have several reasons.
No wide river flows into the country, which means that precipitation is the only source of water, especially snow. Hydrobiologist David Pithart said 53 billions square meters of water annually fall in Czech territory in the form of rain or snow on average, but nearly one third of the water flows away in rivers.
The Czech Republic does not have hydrogeological structures that would be suitable for holding enough groundwater, unlike south European states, the paper writes.
Moreover, two thirds of the country are covered with crystalline rocks that have low capacity for absorbing water.
Some parts of the territory suffer from a lack of water because they have little rain.
Venera nevertheless said the groundwater supplies in the country are rather high.
According to an estimate from 2014, more than one billion square meters of water are available. It is necessary to use water sparingly in drier seasons, yet the situation is not critical, the paper writes.
MfD says it is good news that Czechs use far less water than 30 years ago. In the 1980s, an average person in a city used 250 litres of drinking water per day, while now the average is about 90 litres a day.
