Long term observations of Upper Vistula tributaries, made by authors, showed that the narrowing and straightening of the rivers and their floodplains resulted in accelerated riverbed erosion and the increase of flood risks. River floodplains are widely acknowledged as being very important for biodiversity, therefore by their narrowing the floodplains lost their natural patterns with a consequence decline in habitat and species diversity. In the last years appeared a new approach in river management and engineering, the EU Water Frame Directive consists an important step for more ecological river training. In consequence an increasing number of restoration projects have been initiated in the last years. In the present paper the authors tried to check the possibilities of flood plain widening upstream of the Nowy Sącz City situated on Dunajec River (km: 111+900 - 107+500), where are devastated wastelands. In the urban area of Nowy Sącz the levees distance was left unchanged. For the new conditions the numerical simulation by 1D mathematical model RubarBE was carried on. The obtained results showed the significant decrease in the flood peaks upstream of Nowy Sącz and some in the town. ...
The article presents a hydrochemical characteristic of precipitation sewage in an urbanised catchment area. Water samples were taken at the outlet of the sewage pipe to a retention water reservoir located in Czeladź (Silesian province). Precipitation sewage were taken during spring thaw and in summer when there were heavy rainfalls during storms. It has been proved that precipitation sewage is featured by a high level of pollution both with mineral substances and biogenic elements. Besides, thaw sewage is of very high conductivity (fig. 1) reaching even 7 mS/cm. Such high conductivity results mainly from a high concentration of chlorides (fig. 3). Their source is salt used in winter to remove ice from roads. Both in spring and in summer the most polluted was the first flow of precipitation sewage washing down all the pollutants covering the catchment area. ...
A common phenomenon occurring in small river basins is an increase of spatial development in the period of last 20 years. This development is an effect of economic changes in our country, resulting in growing land cover by all sorts of infrastructure as well as in changes in method of development. It may be observed both giving up the intensive agricultural use in large parts of arable areas and even greater intensification of agricultural use in some selected favorable situated locations. Those processes are of increasing character and lead to substantial changes in hydrological conditions of runoff, which imposes the necessity of verification of the functionality of the existing water regulation structures. The authors have presented issues connected with changing basin storage and determined the influence of spatial development on basin surface sealing and rainwater storage. Concepts of land use changes were presented; calculations of water storage reservoir capacity were made, as well as the influence of storage deficit and changes in forest cover magnitude on bedload transport conditions. Critical parameters of bedload movement were calculated. ...
Living and industrial sewage is claimed to be the only source of the water pollution in urban areas. Therefore the regulation of sewage management – which is building or extension of sewerage systems - is considered to be the suffi-cient protection of the urban water resources. Urbanized areas, especially mu-nicipal – industrial agglomerations become huge sources of air, water, soil, streets, squares, roofs and non-built-up areas pollution. Pollutants washed down from the streets or other impregnated surfaces, during the precipitation or snow-melt, are the serious danger for the soil and water environment. The article reviews the obliging legal regulations concerning the drainage and management of the precipitation water from the urbanized areas. The main attention was paid to possibilities of the retention and infiltration of precipitation water – which is their management in the site where the precipitation originates. Moreover, the examples of created and exploited objects used for retention and infiltration together with the effects of pollutants’ reduction in the treated pre-cipitation water were presented. The basic legal documents concerning the man-agement possibilities and quality standards of precipitation water are the Water Law from 18th July 2001 and The Regulation of the Minister of Environment from 24th July ...
