WARSAW – The Polish climate ministry and mining companies are working on a plan to build desalination installations to improve the quality of water in the Oder and avoid a repeat of a mass fish die-off in the river, deputy climate minister said on Wednesday.
In the summer of 2022, hundreds of tons of dead fish were found in the river that runs along part of Poland’s border with Germany. Smaller amounts of dead fish have been found in Oder and its tributaries several times this year.
Warsaw at the time said it did everything possible, but environmentalists and the Polish Supreme Audit Office later said the response to the 2022 disaster came too late. Scientists have said the main factor behind it was water salinity in the Oder’s tributaries where coal mines disgorge saline water feeding toxic golden algae.
“We cooperate with mining companies which, unfortunately, cannot stop dumping saline water into the Oder for now, because this would involve the need to close them overnight,” Deputy Climate Minister Urszula Zielinska told reporters. Miners, however, will have investment plans ready by the end of September to build desalination installations where needed, she said.
Zielinska said financing the plan will pose a challenge and require solutions linked to the general transformation of the Polish mining industry, which faces mounting production costs and declining demand for the fuel.
“We know that the cost of building such a desalination installation for one of the largest mining companies ranges from 1.2 billion zlotys ($303.57 million) to 1.5 billion zlotys, so it is a huge investment,” she said.
Mining companies that discharge saline water into Oder include state-owned coal producer Polska Grupa Gornicza, copper miner KGHM and coking coal producer JSW.
