Navigation Canal at Přelouč on the Elbe: Public Comments on the CZK 3.3 Billion Project Accepted Until Mid-August

The public has until mid-August to submit comments on the proposed navigation canal near the town of Přelouč on the Elbe River — the project is once again undergoing an environmental impact assessment (EIA), the Czech Directorate of Waterways has announced.

The navigation stage is designed to bypass a roughly three-kilometre non-navigable stretch of the Elbe. The plan includes building a new three-metre movable weir, two lock chambers measuring 115 by 12.5 metres, a navigation canal up to 50 metres wide, a small hydroelectric plant, as well as relocating about 2.5 kilometres of road II/333 and constructing a new bridge over the Elbe. This canal is just one of seven construction projects under the "Elbe Navigability to Pardubice" scheme, whose total cost — including riverbed works, modernisation of the Srnojedy stage and a new port in Pardubice — exceeds five billion crowns.

"Floodplain habitats and natural wetlands are among the most valuable yet most vulnerable ecosystems. Once drained or lost, they are extremely difficult, and often impossible, to restore," says Gita Matlašková, head of the "For Living Rivers" campaign at the environmental group Arnika. According to her, the regulation of the Elbe has already altered the water regime of the entire Polabí region, and combined with climate change, this is driving further drying of the landscape, loss of biodiversity — including the disappearance of wetland orchid species such as the lady's slipper orchid — and worsening conditions for agriculture.

The idea of building the canal has been pursued by the state since the late 1990s. The project was originally estimated at around 2.5 billion crowns. On 29 September 2000, the Czech Directorate of Waterways received a positive EIA opinion, but on 13 December 2016 a binding negative opinion was issued instead. The authority is now seeking a new positive assessment for a revised canal route, now estimated to cost around 3.3 billion crowns.

The original canal route ran through the Slavíkovy Ostrovy islands near Přelouč — a popular recreation area and habitat for EU-protected butterfly species, the large copper and the scarce large blue. Courts repeatedly overturned zoning decisions, some construction permits, and — most critically — permits allowing harm to nearly fifty specially protected species, meaning the project could never be fully approved.

Back in 2009, the Supreme Audit Office concluded that the state had failed to convincingly justify the need for investment in the Elbe waterway. In 2019, the Office added that the promised shift of freight transport from roads to water had not materialised, while around 927 million crowns had already been spent preparing the never-built navigation stages at Děčín and Přelouč — a figure now approaching one billion crowns.

In the new EIA procedure, the canal route largely avoids the valuable meadows where the butterflies live, though impact on the Natura 2000 site — the European-significant "Meadows near Přelouč" area — could not be ruled out. The canal was originally planned to be built between 2001 and 2025; now construction is not expected to begin before 2031.

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Source: ekolist.cz