Fejér László: Árvizek és belvizek szorításában (Vízügyi Történeti Füzetek 15. Budapest, 1997)

Idegennyelvű összefoglalók

IN THE PRESSURE OF FLOODS AND INLAND WATERS The development of organisational, legal and financial conditions of water damage protection in Hungary (Brief summary) The first evidences of water related legislation date from the very early periods of the 1000-years history of the Hungarian state. References to flood control improvement works along the frequently inundated Hungarian upstream section of the Danube have been detected in documents preserved from the Xllth century. A royal decree issued in 1426 has ordered the nobility and the feudal tenants alike to join forces in the construction of defences around a community. During the 150 years of Turkish rule over the larger part of the country, the floods feeding the marshes and induced to spread by low dikes have offered shelter to the population against marauding armies. Organised forms of flood control and emergency action have emerged in the first half of the XlXth century. This is why the present volume focuses on the 150-year long history of flood control in Hungary. The catchment areas of the large Hungarian streams cover the entire area of the Carpathian Basin. Of the two main catchments, those of the Danube and the Tisza rivers, the latter has always been exposed to greater flood hazards. As long as the flood plain wetlands produced no appreciable additional income to the landowners, isolated attempts at flood control remained confined to local communities. Once the booming demand for food on the West-European markets has prompted the landowners to drain the marshes, to regulate the widely meandering rivers by cutting their oxbows and to reclaim the expanding flood plains by means of levees, the case of flood control has started commanding growing attention. Hydraulic projects based on state and landowner interests had been launched around the middle of the XlXth century. River regulation projects in the interest of navigation were financed from the state budget, while the embankments making the reclaimed flood plains arable were built by the flood control associations founded by the landowners in a particular area. The flood control associations closely linked to each other along the River j