A szegedi nagyárvíz és újjáépítés. Európa Szegedért (Budapest- SZeged, 2004)

III. A jövő - Dr. Szlávik Lajos: A Tisza árvízvédemi rendszerének megújítása: A Vásárhelyi-terv továbbfejlesztése

DR. LAJOS SZLAVIK

THE RENEWAL OF THE PROTECTION SYSTEM OF THE RIVER TISZA: THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE VÁSÁRHELYI-PLÁN

After nearly a decade of dry, droughty period, from 1998 several extremely dangerous floods have passed on the Tisza.

Previously the primary aim of flood control was to rescue the goods and to increase the value of arable land. This was what determined the nature of our protection system that was planned by Pál Vásárhelyi 160 years ago and that has since become an integral part of the Tisza landscape. Today the degree and judgement of the damage caused by floods is determined not by the loss of crop, but by the direct danger, which citizens are exposed to and the destruction of their homes; security has become a basic condition of human existence.

During the one and a half century since the beginning of flood control this area on the Great Hungarian Plain has fundamentally changed in an economic as well as a geographical sense. Its population has increased by 400%, while, for instance, its water surfaces have decreased to 10%. On the primarily agricultural, almost 16 thousand km2s big flood plain that is protected by flood control dams there are 400 settlements and almost 300 thousand private houses. On this territory there is a network of a 6400 kms long, internationally important public road and railway system and more than 30 thousand kms long drainage and irrigation canals.

Therefore the conception of the Vásár- helyi-plan (VTT) clearly determined the increase of the flood security of the Tisza- valley in the decrease of flood-levels by the improvement of the runoff rate of the high- water bed, the restoration of the bed-conditions of 1970 and by the realisation of the spillway storage system that can be built on the domestic flood plain, so that the spillway of the catastrophic floods would be accompanied by the reactivation of the flood plain as a result of regulated water diversion.

The conception of the VTT fixes the principle of the necessity of the simultaneous improvement offood security and the ecological condition. In the Tisza-valley that is affected by the VTT, in spite of previous river regulations and flood controlling measures and the irrational use of the landscape there are a significant number of really unique, internationally recognised natural values that have to be protected.

The costs of the first stage of development constitute altogether 130 billion HUF, half of which is for flood control investments, while the other is for rural development, regional management and the improvement of the infrastructure. We plan to cover a quarter of the costs of full realization from EU-resources.

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