Praha will build a new pond in Letná, which will be fed by the Vltava

Prague - The Prague City Hall will begin constructing a new pond this year in Letná Plain. It will be located in the area near the Hanavský Pavilion towards the sandy area and will be supplied with water from the Vltava River via a pump. The city already has the zoning decision and is awaiting the building permit. Dan Frantík, the head of the city hall's green care department, said this to ČTK today. The costs have not yet been precisely calculated, but they will exceed ten million crowns.

"If everything goes according to plan, construction will begin in September. The Letná park is relatively dry and there is a problem with water, we do not even have irrigation for the lawns there. The slope is completely dry and the flat area is not doing well either. When we looked into history, (landscape architect František Josef) Thomayer planned a water area there, but no one ever got around to it," Frantík said.

The area of the new pond will be approximately half a hectare. Water will be pumped into it through one of the three working shafts of the Rudolf Mine from the 16th century. "There will be a pump at the bottom that will draw water, and then it will flow into the water area by gravity through pipes," Frantík said. The city does not plan for surface feeding, as there are lawns nearby that will absorb the water.

The city will calculate the construction costs. "It needs to be sealed quite well so that the water we get up there relatively complicatedly does not leak back. The biggest costs will thus be for sealing," Frantík said.

The pond in Letná will also be created due to the fight against drought. This April, the capital city faced the driest period in the last six years. Average monthly flows at all monitored locations were about a quarter of the usual amount for this month. In addition to ponds in the fight against drought, Prague wants to build underground reservoirs to capture water within the city, repair ponds, and expand street tree rows.