Jelenia Góra mayor: Government and governor’s help enabled us to buy essential equipment

Jelenia Góra has not yet finished repairing the damage caused by the 2024 floods. The city has awarded a contract to rebuild the bridge on Lwówecka Street over the Bóbr River, a route that also serves as a shortcut toward Lwówek Śląski. The project is worth about 6 million zlotys, and the city expects to complete it within 10 to 11 months.

The municipality also received funding from the regional government to rebuild part of Wolności Street. It plans to hold the tender this year and restore about 1.3 kilometers of the road next year. Further work will remain after that. The city water company, PWiK “Wodnik,” will also rebuild sanitary sewers destroyed in the flood, using nearly 50 million zlotys from the European FEnIKS program.

The flood damaged more than 270 million zlotys worth of municipal property, including roads, bridges, public buildings, sewers and the wastewater treatment plant. The plant is undergoing modernization intended to protect the sewage system from future flooding, but the project will not finish until the end of 2029.

Łużniak says the city is raising vulnerable parts of the system, including pumping stations, control stations and settling tanks, so they will not be submerged again. The 2024 flood reached record levels, standing 40 centimeters higher than the previous record on the Bóbr and about 30 centimeters higher on the Kamienna. Some vulnerable elements have already been rebuilt with emergency funding received after the flood.

The mayor also recalled that water utilities from other cities, including Warsaw, sent ozonation units in September 2024. Within two days, sewage leaving Jelenia Góra had been bacteriologically neutralized. The city’s treatment plant returned to full operation after three months, while some other flooded plants still have not reached full capacity. Łużniak said no large company known to him remains unable to resume operations after the disaster.

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We want to build four shelters. We also have shelters used by our predecessors. They can accommodate between 5,000 and 7,000 people.