WAITING FOR WATER

by Tomáš Pacovský

Two hands under the table squeezed each other for approval. This was the sign. Vlastimil and Lucie Hegr were buying the house, which marked the beginning a journey the couple decided to embark upon in the Czech village of Václavice. A village in which Lucie used to visit her grandmother as a child. Also, a village still dependent on its own resources of water. But what they did not expect, was to run out of water. Except one day they did. And then a few years later, in 2021, Václavice was put on the world map as it became one of the battlefields of an international dispute over the extension of a nearby Polish coal mine and its potential effects on the region, regarding among others water supplies.

With a rooster crowing in the background, Václavice really paints a picture of an idyllic village. A few dozen houses, some quite old, others brand new, in a little valley all stretched out alongside a long road, making it the third longest village in the Czech Republic.

For a closer look, particularly into well maintained as well as rather messy gardens, they offer a sight not so common these days. Wells. One might think it is a relic of the past. Quite the contrary – it is a necessity. Václavice belongs to just a few percent of villages or towns in the Czech Republic without access to public water supply. Despite it being like this for dozens of years, in recent times, locals have been battling a shortage.

“I thought somebody was either taking a shower or doing the dishes. And suddenly, there was no running water,” recounts 45-yearold Vlastimil Hegr, a father of three, who almost 20 years ago moved to the village with his wife Lucie. She adds, “The boys went to pee behind the bush so we wouldn’t have to flush.” A story like this is not uncommon.

“My neighbour had shampoo in her hair when the water stopped. She had to go to my house to finish her shower,” recalls Iva Červená, a 61-year-old chairman of the local council as well as the manager of a recycling company, who fell in love with a local picturesque halftimbered house 15 years ago.

And the disruption of the local idyll continues. As you climb the hill surrounding Václavice, you get a view of this massive concrete structure and a monstrous pit with a moon-like landscape. These two sights are a power plant and a coal mine, located only a few kilometres away, on the Polish side.

According to the governmental organisation Czech Geological Survey, the Turów mine is one of the reasons for the declining water levels, alongside water usage and climate change. Those have been observed in the region since the 1980s. Even if the mine’s impact, specifically on Václavice’s resources, has not been proven, the locals began to worry the mine might be taking their water. Especially if the mine expands. And that is what Poland plans to do.

Nonetheless, the opinions throughout the village vary. Some even question whether a nearby sand mine on the Czech side can play a role, even though that has been denied by local authorities. What is certain, though, is that the village of 500 people think twice before using water. “One realises its value. Even how much one spends on washing and so on,” Mr Hegr points out. He estimates that the family uses less than 3,000 litters of water per week. As opposed to an average Czech family with an access to a water pipeline, who uses 4,000 litters according to the Prague Waterworks and Sewerage Company.

Miraculous Water

As the May sun shines and temperatures mark the approach of summer, lunch is being served outside at the Hegr household. While Mr Hegr is constructing a trampoline with the help of his son Vojtěch, Mrs Hegr is joined by their two daughters, Naďa and Julie, in the kitchen. “Do you want some of our miraculous water?” Mrs Hegr offers. She is referring to their drinking water. A container of which can be found in their kitchen on a little stool, reminiscent of an altar. When the light shines right, it reflects through the water and onto a wall.

Six such containers were empty just a few days back. “We don’t have drinking water in our well. So, each week, I drive to a local natural spring,” Mr Hegr explains. He loads his van with a wheelbarrow and six blue clear containers of 90 litres combined – enough for a family of five for a week. The drive is not too long, and once he parks his van, a little path leads him to a spring in a forest. The sound of a light wind and leaves rustling is interrupted only by Mr Hegr filling up the containers. As people walk past, he greets them. “The spring has a nice history, it supposedly has a healing effect. And it’s interesting to talk to people, it’s such a diversion,” Mr Hegr explains a tradition, which started during the pandemic and replaced going for drinking water at their parents’ in a nearby city. “But of course, it takes time.” The Hegr family is a rarity, the majority of the village buys their water from the shop.

Lottery Game

Living with water in Václavice used to be like a lottery game. While some had enough water, others were struggling. While some had water good enough for cooking or showering, others would open their wells and find yellowish water smelling of rotten eggs. Mr Hegr’s survey for the local council revealed that about a third of the participating households had a bad quality of water.

“This thing, luckily, I haven’t had to use in a long time,” Mr Hegr says and points to a large 1,000-litre water tank. The past months have been full of rain, so the village is doing fine when it comes to water. But Mr Hegr also made sure the family is not left to chance, and goes on to explain an elaborate system of pumps and water tanks, which makes sure the house utilises water from both the well and from rainwater. “It sounds DIY, and now it’s running automatically, so it’s okay, but of course it was annoying to build,” he says. “I don’t know how it is with others, but I think that once there’s enough water, one forgets the struggles of the past,” Mrs Hegr adds.

Living In An Industrial Zone

A little further up the village, Matouš Kirschner, a local farmer, tends a small herd of cows, sheep, and geese. His farm is also home to a horse, bees, and chickens.

“During the dry years we had no pasture, no grass. The hay I had for the winter, was gone in August or September. I had to kill some of the cattle because of that,” Mr Kirschner says as he looks in the direction of a 9 metre-deep well which has not been used for years. As of now, there is about 40 centimetres of water. Luckily, the farm has a second well.

Despite only coming to the village in 2000, Mr Kirschner could observe the decline in water levers since then. “When we didn’t have water, it had to be brought by the firefighters,” he says. But the struggle for water has never made him question his place or the farming itself. Mr Kirschner talks passionately about local life and about farming in general. He comes off as a very down-to-earth person, at one with nature. “I moved to the village because I wanted to be close to nature, to animals.”

And just by looking around, he is close to both. But he is also close to the mine, the power plant, and a few wind turbines which are also located near the village. And not all locals, Mr Kirschner included, seem happy about those, either. “I sit down for a meal in the kitchen, and the windmills flash into my eyes. It bothers me,” he complains, “The mine. The windmills park. Farmers who use chemicals. Sometimes I feel like I live in an industrial zone.”

Denis, a small kid whose father is completing his community service by helping Mr Kirschner, jumps away slightly as an old machine loudly crushes corn into ground grain for animals.

“So far, we have enough water but it is not good. We had to buy a water cleaner, and it still not 100% good. They have been promising us a water pipeline at least for ten years,” says 68-year-old local resident František Beneš.

The Waiting

“From the stories we heard, there used to be a spring here somewhere. But we never found it,” Mr Kirschner says. “Later we were told it was destroyed by tractors many years ago.” And it was when Mr Kirschner was revitalising an alley connecting the farm with the Wohlman Cross, a local spot of pilgrimage, that he noticed a rather wet place on the land. “We started digging and then all of a sudden, surface water from the surrounding area began to flow in,” he says, referring to an unexpected moment of finding a long-lost spring. As of now, there is water at least one thirds of the year. “Might not be ideal for humans, but if there’s a thirsty deer or a fox, they can go have a drink.”

Now waiting for good weather and enough water is replaced by waiting for a water pipeline. A piece of infrastructure that has been debated for years and years. Now its construction seems to be afoot – even though people are sometimes reluctant to believe it.

“But they should start digging next year,” confirms Mrs Červená, the chairman of the local council. It will be funded by Polish money. Money which was paid out as a compensation after Prague and Warsaw got into an international, media-heavy dispute about the expansion of the mine and the extension of the mining until 2044.

“But I mean, if they flood the mine in the future, like the other mines in the area, I can go there with my sailboat. Well not me, I won’t live to see it, but maybe my children or their children,” Mr Hegr says jokingly. And truly, there are plans to fill the huge pit with nothing else but… water. The very thing the region is struggling for. But people will have to wait for that, too. •