On June 3, 2022, the monitoring station on the Bečva river has become operational

On Friday, June 3, 2022, the monitoring station on the Bečva River have started its operation. The basic goal of the project is to verify the possibility of continuous monitoring of water toxicity, in order to identify accidents in time, such as the ecological accident on the river Bečva from September 2020.

With this project, the research institute wants to show solutions that could be used on selected watercourses in the Czech Republic with the potential occurrence of a similar accident and offer this solution for use in practice. The aim of the project is not to additionally identify further evidence from the mentioned accident, but to learn from this unfortunate experience and offer a solution for the future. The experts of VÚV TGM draw on their experience, which has already been applied in the past on the Odra River or in the monitoring of drinking water for Prague from the Želivka waterworks. The project can be followed by the existing NAVAROSO information system, which can provide the cross-linked data needed to quickly obtain information on possible causes of water quality deterioration, procedures for determining the type of pollution and estimating its spread in the watercourse. The NAVAROSO system itself will make water protection more effective, both in the area of ​​mitigation of the negative effects of pollution by faster detection of its causes and in the prevention of possible pollution by more accurate and faster available information on its potential sources in the river basin.

The project is financed from the own resources of VÚV TGM and the expected duration of the entire project is planned for one year. The results of the project will then be evaluated, including the determination of a detailed procedure for the operation of the monitoring station, and will then be handed over to government officials for further possible use, which is common practice in neighboring Germany.

Czech Television, TN.cz and ČTK (all sources in Czech) have informed about the start of the station’s operation. You may find out more about the online continuous river water toxicity monitoring project here.