The Mayor of the Town and Municipality of Lwówek Śląski Ludwik Kaziów and Józef Król, president of the Bolesławiec Water and Sewerage Company, signed a notarial deed in February 2014. Following the agreement, the company conducts business activities within the scope of the municipalities’ own tasks entrusted to it by the municipalities forming the “Bóbr” Intermunicipal Union, as well as the municipality and town of Lwówek Śląski—covering municipal services related to water supply and wastewater disposal. Thanks to Lwówek Śląski joining the company, the company’s fixed costs are divided among the municipalities using PWiK’s services. The municipalities of the “Bóbr” Intermunicipal Union and Lwówek Śląski have separate tariffs.
After a year of work and changes carried out by PWiK, it was time to take stock. On this occasion, Lwówek’s mayor Mariola Szczęsna invited residents of the municipality and town of Lwówek, as well as PWiK president Józef Król. The authorities of the town and municipality of Bolesławiec also attended, including deputy mayor Iwona Mandżuk and municipal head Andrzej Dutkowski.
“The path of change was not easy,” Józef Król said in his opening remarks. “Former mayor Ludwik Kaziów had been working and lobbying hard since 2011 for our company to take over Lwówek. However, this required a series of analyses and preparing the shareholders for such a change. In the end, it succeeded, and as a result Lwówek gained efficient service, good-quality water and functioning wastewater treatment plants. We recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of local government, and the renovated water treatment station on Graniczna Street in Lwówek is a gift from the local authorities to residents. We will promote and distribute tap water to residents during Lato Agatowe. In Bolesławiec, at the Ceramics Festival, we handed out 10,000 cups of water from our dispensers. There is still much work ahead of us in Lwówek, such as flushing the network, but we promise to do it all,” the PWiK president concluded.
The next item on the programme was a presentation for residents entitled “What we found, what we have done and what we plan to do in Lwówek Śląski.” All the issues were presented by Grzegorz Kozłowski, the company’s technical director.
The speaker briefly discussed the history of Lwówek joining the company in Bolesławiec and showed what the local water supply and wastewater disposal system had looked like until then.
“A major problem in Lwówek a year ago was that any failure interrupted the water supply to the entire town; that threat no longer exists,” Grzegorz Kozłowski said. “The results of the audit we conducted before taking over the facilities in Lwówek showed that they had been neglected for years. The roads to the wells and pumps were overgrown, there was no access for vehicles and there was no knowledge of how the valves operated, so failures were dealt with drastically—by turning off the valves and cutting off the water supply to the entire town. Sometimes, after the water was turned back on, residents received ‘manganese soup’ instead of clean water. More than 30% of residents were billed based on water meters that had not been legally certified. There were no procedures or work organisation. The town was at risk of being placed on a list of polluters because of inadequate wastewater treatment. Therefore, I have great respect for the staff, who nevertheless managed to control the pollution without measurements,” the director added.
Over the course of the year, PWiK prepared digital maps for Lwówek, established a Customer Service Office and launched an on-call telephone line. The staff received new work clothes and, above all, new equipment; network monitoring was introduced and water meters with expired certification were replaced. A mechanical wastewater treatment plant was built in Niwnice. Numerous facility renovations were carried out, and the wastewater treatment plant in Włodzice Małe was put into operation. The process of eliminating unnecessary and energy-intensive booster stations began, while the booster station on X Dywizji Street was reconstructed and modernised. Water production was metered at all intakes, and more than 10 km of the sewage network was cleaned. Construction of the Ustronie–Gaszów transmission pipeline also began, and all PWiK facilities are well maintained—it is clear that they finally have a proper operator.
The many irregularities that have already been eliminated concerned residents attending the meeting. They asked whether those responsible for the neglect would be held accountable and whether there had been a risk to residents who drank water with, for example, elevated manganese levels. Józef Król, the company’s president, and the head of Bolesławiec Municipality Andrzej Dutkowski answered these concerns.
“It is not so black and white; there is a broader context,” Józef Król explained. “The water was regularly tested bacteriologically and physicochemically by Sanepid, which conditionally approved it for use. In its assessment, there was therefore no danger. It is true that manganese levels exceeded the applicable standards, but that does not mean they were harmful to health,” the president added.
The head of Bolesławiec Municipality also supported this explanation, stating that Lwówek’s main problem was that water distribution and wastewater disposal were not handled by professionals. There was no PWiK company there, but rather a budgetary plant—and such plants have not proved successful anywhere.
“Our municipality could have faced the same situation in 1993,” Andrzej Dutkowski said. “I was summoned by the provincial authorities to take over the waterworks assets, but I did not do so. I knew they had to be placed in the hands of professionals—a company with the equipment, knowledge and resources to manage them properly. The Bolesławiec PWiK company is fortunate in its managers. They think in terms of the long term, and I am certain that in Lwówek you will receive the same high standards of water supply and wastewater collection as in the town and municipality of Bolesławiec.”
The mayor also reassured residents. “I invited many people to today’s meeting who could have told us about the situation from their own experience, but unfortunately not everyone came,” Mariola Szczęsna said. “I would like to take this opportunity to thank both the company and the authorities of the municipality and town of Bolesławiec. Thank you for agreeing to take us on. I know it was not easy to take over a municipality with such arrears,” the mayor said.
By 2016, PWiK plans to undertake measures aimed at further improving water quality and increasing safety, including removing manganese deposits from pipes, building a new water intake for Radomiłowice, and constructing transmission pipelines connecting separate small rural systems supplied by individual malfunctioning intakes into one integrated water supply system supplied simultaneously from several municipal intakes.
It also plans to carry out a comprehensive modernisation of the wastewater treatment plant in Lwówek Śląski using EU funding. To improve customer billing services, radio-based water meter reading will be introduced.
“Reducing water loss will also be a major technical and organisational challenge. Today, water losses in Lwówek Śląski Municipality exceed 30%, while in the Bolesławiec system they do not exceed 10% and are among the lowest in Poland. We are aware that we must make up for many years of neglect in a relatively short time. But what we have already achieved in a single year is a guarantee of our effectiveness and the full implementation of the plans we have adopted,” PWiK president Józef Król added.