Much time has passed since the discovery of an enormous ecological disaster on the Oder River, on the border between Poland and Germany. The Oder River is the second longest river in my home country of Poland, rising originally from the Czech Republic. The natural disaster which occurred there in the past few years is an interesting test for how we confront environmental issues.

The Polish government failed to find the cause of the catastrophically high salt levels in the river for a long time afterwards, which seems to have led to the death of tons of fish.1 Now, though, it has come up with a new idea.

Minister Michał Gróbarczyk said recently to Polish radio that the government thinks that implementation of something called ‘the Special Act’ will be possible in the fourth quarter of 2022. He said that the Act aims to “streamline investment procedures... to ensure the adequate condition of treated wastewater and increase the level of water resources in the Oder River.”

He also pointed out that the dominant role in terms of investment on the Oder, primarily in infrastructure, will be held by the State Water Company, Polish Waters. That’s the same national water company that was unable to prevent the disaster from happening in the first place, was unable to respond quickly, and still has no idea how it happened.

But will the government’s approach work?

Let's deal with the idea of sewage treatment plants first. We have known for a long time that tons of sewage and waste go into Poland's rivers. A representative of the Polish Water Authority himself pointed out that along the Oder River alone, 282 sewage outfalls have been recorded that do not have a current water-legal permit to discharge sewage.

The problem arises when we build wastewater treatment plants, mostly with EU money, and then do not hold the resources to manage them and end up dumping wastewater into rivers en masse. As Jacek Engel from the Greenmind Foundation and the Save the Rivers Coalition put it when speaking to Gazeta.pl:2

Big cities are policing themselves a bit more, but in smaller cities there is drama. They have built sewage treatment plants with EU money, but there is not enough money to maintain them. To cut costs, they release untreated sewage into the river from time to time. Mostly on weekends, because it's well known that the environmental inspectors don't work on Saturdays and Sundays.

This is a classic case of the state attempting to respond to a complex issue without thinking it through properly. Seeking new investment, as the Special Act does, is good, but the government’s approach to river management raises considerable opposition from scientists. While developments can be left to nature, which, as experts point out, is often capable of itself counteracting such harmful processes within it, state planners decide to change its biological makeup from top to bottom.

State interventionism is trying to prove to us that it has a better plan for the course and height of the water in the Oder than mother nature. We, as humans, are responsible for the current state of the world's rivers. It's time to stop the central changes that are making the current situation even worse.

The attempt to "save" the river in the manner proposed by the minister together with the President of Polish Waters in part enables new and needed investments in this sphere. Unfortunately, the money comes with conditions, most of which involve increased centralized control, because it also tries to treat the Oder as "road infrastructure," which risks destroying its natural wealth and significantly affecting the fauna and flora that appear there. I don’t believe that the river's most dangerous species, equipped with a plan of central concrete, will lead anywhere better.

This article was written by Zofia Kościk. Zofia is a Polish writer. She volunteers at ATD Fourth World Poland and is also a campaigner. She is passionate about economics, philosophy, and running.