Czech Republic (reported by David Stransky and Ivana Kabelkova ...

Czech Republic (reported by David Stransky and Ivana Kabelkova)
Czech Water Association (CzWA) was transformed from the Association of Wastewater
Treatment Experts in the year 2008. The new organization covers the whole field of water
supply and urban drainage and aims to be an expert partner to the Czech administration in
sustainable urban water management. CzWA is a partner organization of both EWA and IWA
and wants to play an active role in these organizations in future.
In the last year, a major shift concerning water resources was reached in the Czech Republic,
which is related to the necessity to fulfil the requirements of the Water Framework Directive
and corresponding Czech legislation. The main change occurred in the attitude of the Czech
administration towards rain water in urban areas, where water management experts have been
calling for the application of sustainable urban drainage for a long time. Specialist Group on
Urban Drainage under CzWA (SG UD) was charged to elaborate a basis of the best
management practices for public bodies. The new conception encourages the philosophy to
transfer the obligation of the sustainable treatment of rain water arising on impervious areas to
the owner of the property for newly developed areas. In already urbanized areas motivation
for the implementation of the best management practices should be created (e.g. sewerage
charge reduction). This conception already partly gained ground in the newly prepared
amendment of the Water Act.
The amendment of the Water Act covers for the first time also aspects of combined sewer
overflows. They have not been considered as pollution sources in the Czech legislation yet
and their correct function used to be assessed in a very vague way (usually by the dilution
ratio). The amendment introduces a change in the combined sewer overflows assessment
starting the year 2013, when the receiving water impacts should be considered. In the year
2007 a literature study on foreign procedures was elaborated for the Ministry of Agriculture
by the Czech Technical Society. Selected approaches are tested to become a basis of the
national methodology.
Another project worked on by the SG UD is the Code of Good Practice for rainfall-runoff
modelling, which was ordered by the State Environmental Fund of the Czech Republic. It
should provide a background for the assessment of projects applying for EU grants and set the
state of the art of urban drainage masterplans for quality control.
On the academic ground (which is also involved in above mentioned activities), a common
project of the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) and Brno University of
Technology dealing with the design, operation and reconstruction of sewer systems on
unstable ground was finished. The project further developed outputs of the European project
CARE-S and proposed suitable rehabilitation procedures.
The most important item in the practical sphere of urban drainage has been intensive
infrastructure reconstruction supported by EU financial sources aiming at the improvement of
the quality of surface and ground waters until the year 2010.
Experts from the Czech Republic participated in many international conferences such as the
11 th International Conference on Urban Drainage in Edinburgh and IWA World Water
Congress and Exhibition in Vienna. On the ground of the Civil Engineering Faculty of the
CTU in Prague was organized the 6 th International Symposium on Ultrasonic Doppler Method
for Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Engineering (in cooperation with the Academy of Sciences of

the Czech Republic, Institute of Hydrodynamics and IAHR). About 70 participants from the
whole world discussed topics such as development of new algorithms for velocity field
measurement in pipe and sewer systems and development of methods for the suspended solids
analysis based on the damping of the ultrasonic signal in the stream of fluid.