South Moravia Built Ponds and Wetlands to Retain Water — But Drought Has Left Them Bone Dry

In recent years, towns and villages in southern Moravia have invested heavily in landscape water-retention systems — building ponds, wetlands and specially designed water-permeable road surfaces. For several years these measures worked well, but the current prolonged drought has revealed a harsh truth: when there's no rain and the streams dry up, there's simply nothing left to retain.

A Pond and Eight Wetlands Dried Up

Four years ago, the village of Bohařovice in the Znojmo district built a small pond along with eight wetlands to help retain water. Until last year, the system worked well — water was present even in spring. "We had water here, we had swans, ducklings were hatched. Now there's nothing anywhere. The water level used to be a meter, a meter twenty," said village mayor Iveta Moudrá.

Today you can walk across the pond bed without even getting your feet wet, and some of the wetlands have dried up completely. Most of them rely on two water sources — streams, which have now dried up, and rainfall, which has also been scarce in the village for a long time. Even the 17 millimeters of rain that fell last week did nothing to change the situation. "We have no water — there's nothing to retain," the mayor noted.

A Road That Absorbs Water

In the village of Přísnotice near Brno, a special water-permeable surface has been laid on one of the roads: during rain, instead of running off like it would on asphalt, the water soaks straight into the ground. "These are plastic grids with concrete cubes loosely placed inside them, so water can flow freely between them and seep into the gravel-and-sand base beneath," explained village elder Zdeněk Machovský.

This surface has now covered a one-kilometer stretch of road for two years, though preparing the project took four years. According to the mayor, the solution proved its worth during the 2024 floods: despite 240 millimeters of rainfall, there was no standing water on this stretch at all. But here too, the same problem persists — if there's no rain, there's nothing to absorb.

A Natural Swimming Spot Left Without Water

There's no water either at the popular natural swimming spot Nadymač near the village of Horní Dubenky in the Vysočina region. The pond was drained back in September of last year for a major reconstruction, and it has yet to be refilled. The inflow has run dry, and even last week's rains failed to help.

Village workers even had to mow the grass that had grown on the bottom of the empty reservoir. Swimming there won't be possible this year — the pond is unlikely to fill up again before winter, and even then, only if there's enough snowfall.

Read also: Brno: What to See and Where to Go

Source: ct24.ceskatelevize.cz