Sewage was being discharged directly into the river, which bisects the Polish capital, as an emergency measure designed to prevent the city from being flooded by a blocked-up sewer system, public broadcaster TVP Info reported on Wednesday.

In response to the emergency, Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski convened an urgent meeting of a crisis management team, TVP Info said.

Trzaskowski told reporters at an impromptu news conference that the city’s water and sewage company in the morning decided to “conduct a controlled discharge of sewage” from the part of Warsaw on the west bank of the Vistula River.

He said the decision had been made “as a result of a collector system failure” at the Czajka sewage treatment plant on the river’s east bank.

The Czajka sewage treatment plant in Warsaw. Photo: Panek [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Trzaskowski told the news conference that the emergency discharge of sewage was posing no threat to drinking water in Warsaw.

Sewage was being discharged into the river at a rate of 3 cubic metres per second, according to TVP Info.

Work was under way to make the facility operational again, the broadcaster reported.

The Vistula River flowing through Warsaw. Photo: Dariusz Kowalczyk [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

(gs/pk)

Source: TVP Info, PAP