“By resolution of the Krakow City Council of February 13, 1901, the municipal water system in Krakow was opened on February 14 and put into public use...”
Original text:
Report of the Water Supply Board for 1901
The history of good water for Kraków is long, and its origins go back to 1901. It was then that the first system supplying water to the city was opened. The water supply network was only 81 kilometres long, and water was delivered to 206 household water appliances, while the population numbered approximately 85 thousand. The construction of the water system represented one of the largest and most expensive investment projects undertaken by the city at that time.
Before a real water system was built in Kraków, the city struggled with various problems, such as finding the right sources that could provide enough water, or raising sufficient funds.
In the 19th century, water for Kraków residents came from wells, but a lot of it was contaminated. The city was plagued by numerous epidemics and life expectancy amounted to only 30 years. It was already clear then that “there is not the slightest doubt that supplying the city with good and abundant water is the bravest method of reducing morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases in general, and thus a way to extend the average human life expectancy” [The Kraków Water Supply Case, 1887].
The need to build a water system was understood very well by Józef Dietl, a physician by education, who became the Mayor of Kraków in 1866. He decided to make the city “clean, healthy and decorative.” In 1870, he commissioned a project to “supply the city and suburbs with Vistula water for spraying the streets and for household needs on all floors, up to the attic, for the needs of factories, hospitals and barracks, and finally to decorate the city with 10 fountains” [Report from preparatory work to supply water to Kraków, 1872]. The project was met with disapproval of the City Council, which was concerned about the huge costs. Fortunately, a very notable statement of Mayor Józef Dietl resonated with the authorities: “Do not be discouraged, gentlemen, by the enormous costs that the water system will entail, because the costs will pass and the benefits will be eternal!” Although the idea expressed in this sentence had to wait some time for implementation, the City Council adopted an extremely important resolution in 1898: “It is resolved to build a municipal pumped water system with the maximum daily supply capacity of 16,000 m3 (…) fed with groundwater from aquifers in Bielany”. Ultimately, the water supply system, designed by Roman Ingarden, Eng., was put into operation during the term of office of Mayor Józef Friedlein, on February 14, 1901.
Today, 118 years later, Kraków is an urban area with one million residents consuming over 50 million m3 of water. The water supply network is over 2,200 km long and grows as years pass and the city develops. Every day, four Water Treatment Plants of the City of Kraków provide residents with water of the highest quality.
