Completion of flood protection for Brno will take years

Brno – The completion of flood protection on the main waterways in Brno will take years and cost billions of crowns. There is insufficient protection for an area of about ten square kilometers, where 24,000 people live, particularly in the southern part of the city, according to the specialized municipal website Water in Brno.

Antonín Tůma, who works as the director of watershed management at the state enterprise Povodí Moravy, admitted on Friday that Brno is not protected against a century flood. This does not mean that the city is not preparing measures. However, the pace is influenced by high costs, design complexity, lack of spatial planning, and disputes over the design of measures in specific locations.

Nearly 20 years ago, Brno began working with Povodí Moravy on a flood protection concept based on nature-based principles, which is also mostly related to the modification of the wider surroundings of watercourses. The concept divided measures into 28 phases and designated five priority sections: Poříčí, Trnitá, Zbrojovka, Sokolova, and Jih.

Of the priority sections, only Poříčí is currently under construction. Work, which was supposed to be completed last fall, has been delayed. This spring, the completion date was postponed for the third time, now to April 2025.

This is not a simple project; it is accompanied by unpredictable circumstances, stated city hall spokesman Filip Poňuchálek in the spring. In addition to the riverbed, the sewerage system, water supply lines, and other networks are being repaired, all in the middle of the city between busy streets and bridges. The original budget of 1.26 billion will certainly be exceeded.

The fact that Poříčí is a construction site rather than a completed measure complicates the current flood situation in Brno. Construction companies first had to clear the site to fully start releasing water from the Brno Reservoir.

"The construction is secured, materials and machinery have been removed, dangerous obstacles have been cleared from the watercourse, and at the same time, preventive sandbag filling has started, which would be used along with concrete barriers to block those places in Poříčí where flood protection is not completed," said Deputy Mayor René Černý (ANO) on Friday.

According to the municipal website, construction on the Trnitá section is expected to start in 2026, and on Zbrojovka in 2028. Costs have not yet been set, but they will likely be similar to those for Poříčí. For the Sokolova and Jih sections, the design phase is currently being prepared.

Among other factors, the pace of preparations in Brno may have been influenced by the fact that the city has not suffered any truly devastating flood damage in recent decades. The biggest floods of the 20th century in Brno occurred at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s. In 1938, the city was hit by a century flood on the Svitava and a fifty-year flood on the Svratka. In 1941, the situation reversed, with a century flood on the Svratka and a fifty-year flood on the Svitava threatening the city. In July 1997, when the element wreaked havoc across Moravia, the accumulation of water at the Vírská reservoir spared Brno from the worst damages, as the water level had just been temporarily reduced by ten meters due to dam repairs and a water supply construction.