Government pours more money into water-saving program

With the problem of persistent summer droughts gaining in intensity, the Environment Ministry has announced it will pour more money into a water tank rebates program intended to boost a policy of rainwater harvesting and utilization.

Photo: Pixabay, CC0 Public Domain

Hot summers and droughts are becoming a permanent feature of the central European climate and as farmers count the cost of this year’s drought damages, the government is scrambling to address a broader problem – dwindling reserves of ground and surface water around the country.

“The days when we took water for granted are well and truly over,” Environment Minister Richard Brabec told Czechs recently, urging people to think about whether they could do more to save tap water.

The drawn-out period of drought this summer unveiled ancient hunger stones and over 60 municipalities around the country were forced to introduce restrictions on the use of tap water.

This has led the government to work on a long term-strategy to fight drought and on Tuesday Environment Minister Richard Brabec said a water tank rebates programme which was introduced for selected drought-stricken regions would now be available to people around the country. The program was launched in May of last year and so far more than 5,000 people have received or filed a request for state support, with two hundred million crowns earmarked for the program.

Now the government has earmarked another one million crowns for this purpose, saying that state support for water tanks will also be accessible for country-houses which are inhabited all year round. For sophisticated water recycling devices people may receive up to 100,000 crowns in state support, for water tanks intended to gather rain water used for watering gardens they would get around half of that.

In due time, the ministry will present data regarding the project’s effectiveness.