Barrage Construction in Malczyce on the River Odra – in progress

CNT S.A. executed a contract entitled “Barrage Construction in Malczyce on the River Odra” as a Leader of the Consortium that is a General Subcontractor.

The barrage in Malczyce is the twenty-fifth element accumulating water on the channelled route of the Odra Waterway. It was one of the biggest hydro-technical investments under construction in the Lower Silesia region.

The investment included, among others, the following.:

• A three-span weir with hydraulically operated steel flap gates (the major element accumulating water and regulating the water flow through the barrage),
• A fixed weir of 256 m long,
• A canal lock of 190 m long,
• A river power plant with an installed capacity of 9 MW (situated within the axis of accumulating water between the pillar of the flap weir and the upper head of the canal lock which will use the natural river flow within the river gullet installed at 40 - 240 m/s. for electric energy production, and its main equipment includes 3 turbines with a total power of 9MW),
• Fish ladders (placed between the generating unit of the power plant and the reinforced concrete navigation lock chamber which was required by the Environment Permit of 2009)
• A wide range of other accompanying facilities, such as an irrigation tank for floodplain forests, tele technical buildings, roads and squares, transformer stations, etc.

Since 2000 the project has been financed by National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management, and three years later it started to be financed from resources from the special-purpose reserve for tasks from a multi-annual “Programme for the Odra River 2006".

The investment was aimed at:

• Restoring the original groundwater levels,
• Stopping the erosion process at the Odra river bed below the barrage level in Brzeg Dolny,
• Restoring the navigability of the river,
• Protecting the barrage in Brzeg Dolny from scouring and loss in stability,
• Protecting valuable floodplain forests (currently endangered due to the area drying out),
• Electric energy production.