Radio România Internațional

Tag: dam

  • Projects of the Ceausescu Era and their remnants in today’s Bucharest

    Projects of the Ceausescu Era and their remnants in today’s Bucharest


    The Crangasi district in the north-western area of Bucharest in the north-western area of Bucharest boasts Romanian capital city’s biggest artificial lake. The water surface area has a rather recent history. It appeared 36 years ago, in 1986. It is known as the Mill Lake. The lake is also known as the Ciurel or the Dambovita Lake. The area proper of the water surface is impressive; it used to be part of the large-scale watercourse arrangement project targeting the Dambovita river which cuts through Romania’s capital city, from north-west to the east.



    We’re about to explore the history of the Mill Lake, and our guide is historian Cezar Buiumaci with the Bucharest Municipal Museum. Here he is, taking us back to the beginnings of Bucharest’s newest and biggest lake.



    Cezar Buiumaci:



    The Mill Lake is part of Dambovita river’s watercourse arrangement project and, as an idea, it first occurred once with the inception of Bucharest’s town planning works in the 20th century’s early 1980s. It was part of Nicolae Ceausescu’s great makeover project for the city. The Bucharest leader was only taking up on an idea that had occurred previously, that of the construction of a waterway linking Bucharest to the Danube and involving the watercourse of Dambovita and Arges rivers. The condition of the Dambovita river flow was analyzed, only to reveal that the old river bed was not fit for inland waterway transportation. For the water flow to increase, two big river-barrier lakes were created: Ciurel, also known as the Mill Lake or the Dambovita Lake, and Vacaresti.



    The large-scale makeover project of the mid 1908s targeting Dambovita had a political component, but also a town planning significance. Here is historian Cezar Buiumaci once again, with the details.



    On July 5, 1985, the Romanian Communist Party’s Central Committee convened a meeting of the Executive Political Committee, highlighting the impending necessity of carrying watercourse arrangement works for Dambovita river as part and parcel of the new Civic Center project. The project included the construction of a big river-barrier lake in the western part of the city, with the purpose of storing an important volume of water required for the clean-water supply of Dambovita river. It had also been though out as a protection system in the event of the rivers’ bursting their banks, at once being a pleasure lake. Watercourse arrangement works also targeted the sanitizing of Dambovita river as it was flowing through Bucharest, the improvement of the climate, the creation of proper navigation facilities and the carrying of construction works for the Bucharest – River Danube waterway. Works took off as soon as the official consent was given, by dint of Decree no. 201 issued on July 12, 1985.



    However, in spite of all that, the idea of Dambovita river’s navigability would be given up on, as soon as specialists were consulted. On September 28, 1985, the construction site was opened festively, while almost a year later, in August 1986, the gates were be closed, of the Ciurel dam.



    Historian Cezar Buiumaci:



    On August 21, 1986, the large-scale work was completed for the Ciurel river-barrier lake, Bucharest’s biggest artificial lake, stretching along a surface area of 240 hectares, with a total capacity of 20 million cubic meters and meant to provide the supply of drinkable, irrigation and industrial water. The river-barrier water lake also had the purpose of collecting the water from floodwaters. The undertaking also included river bank protection works, upstream of the lake, until Dragomiresti-Deal, along 5 kilometres, or thereabouts. A surface area of more than 1,100 hectares of farmland was thus protected, as well as other categories of investments lying in the proximity of the river bed. For the water to be evacuated, a river dam was built, nearby the Ciurel bridge, it was made of ferro-concrete, with 3 dams having a 6-meter span each. The sea of Crangasi has a depth of 5 to 10 meters and is embanked with a dam made of thick clay, obtained from the excavation operations for the valley of the lake.



    However, the large-scale project meant the relocation of a cemetery and of several human communities that inhabited the area. According to the urban legends, sometimes human bodies could be seen floating on the water, so the lake was dubbed the Death Lake, a play upon words, in Romanian, with Lacul Morii becoming Lacul Mortii.



    Cezar Buiumaci:



    Here, apart from other objectives, there was a cemetery around Crangasi church and the decision was taken, for the cemetery to be dismantled and the human remains to be relocated to the Giulesti-Sarbi cemetery. In early 1985, disinterment works began. The timeframe for that kind of work was limited, the employees were unable to meet their deadlines and the gravediggers from other cemeteries refused to help with the dismantling, so sanitation workers were employed instead. The construction of the lake on the premises of the former cemetery, that still makes the topic of several urban legends.



    Another purpose for the construction of Lacul Morii, the Mill Lake was that of doing leisure and sports activities.



    Historian Cezar Buiumaci:



    Since it was built in a densely-populated area, the Dambovita lake also had to cater for a cultural and sports component. Being an area where the access from other districts could be made using the underground thoroughfare but also the surface public transport, arrangements were designed for ground and nautical sports: sports fishing wharfs and an island with a surface area of roughly 5 hectares. For its greater part, it was built by workers from other enterprises doing community work, they put in more than 70,000 hours in terms of workload until September 2, 1987.



    The Mill Lake in north-western Bucharest, for quite some time now, has been a noted landmark of the city. The development of the last three decades, the events that have been staged there as well as the natural climate that has been created in the meantime have made the lake increasingly attractive.


    (EN)





  • Rearranging the Danube Delta

    Rearranging the Danube Delta

    The Danube Delta as it is today is one of natures magical creations. It is also an epitome of mans capacity to transform the environment according to his thirst for knowledge and his needs. To a significant extent, the Danube Delta of today is a perfect example of mans ability to rearrange it, with such an endeavor being documented as early as the mid-19th century, so much so that the most important works carried by man, using its intelligence, were aimed at rearranging River Danube in order to facilitate navigation for commercial vessels, thus encouraging economic progress and human mobility.



    The rearrangement of the Danube Delta was a grandiose project. It targeted the transformation of the river in its entirety into a pan-European navigable waterway. A quick look at a map of the Danube Delta dated 1856, but also a look at one of the Deltas present-day maps reveals the numerous watercourse rearrangement works for the Danubes Sulina Arm, which was eventually turned into a navigable waterway. The historian Constantin Ardeleanu with the “Lower Danube” University in Galati is a specialist in the history of the rearrangement works for the Delta.



    Constantin Ardeleanu:


    “It was an extremely interesting technical work, initiated in 1856 and completed all throughout the following timeframe. It has continued to this day, yet there are technical operations that need to be carried in Sulina, to maintain the navigability of the river. What has been most important and literally groundbreaking all along was the manner in which the works were conducted. A personality of world engineering coordinated the works, his name was Charles Hartley, he also scooped a great number of prestigious awards for everything he did at the Danube. Later on, he was appointed a technical consultant for the Suez Commission and contributed to the navigabilization of one of the waterways that was most vital for world trade.”



    West of Tulcea, to the north, the Chilia arm branches off from the Danube, while east of the city, the Sfantu Gheorghe arm branches off from the Sulina Arm, to the south. Of the three arms, the one in the middle would be chosen as the main waterway. The 71-kilometre long Sulina Canal flew into the Black Sea next to the harbor of Sulina, a fishermens village that later grew into one of Romanias most cosmopolitan cities. By and large, rearrangement works consisted in the cutting of the bends and meanders made by the water course, in the consolidation of the banks and the dredging of the bottom so that the river may be deeper.



    Historian Constantin Ardeleanu:


    “Works began in 1857, when one of the arms was supposed to be picked for rearrangement works. There were several options, Hartley shared the opinion that the Sfantu Gheorghe arm was more favorable for such works than Sulina. Other engineers thought that financially, the Sulina arm was more prone to being rendered navigable. Works proper began in 1858 and the Sulina dams, which can still be seen today, were inaugurated in 1861. As a direct outcome of the works, the depth of the Danube over the Sulina sandbar, the bank of sand that was created there, increased from around 2.5 meters in 1856 to 4 or 5 meters five years later, and never ceased to increase until it reached the navigable level of 8 meters, roughly maintaining the same level to this day.”



    Why was such a grandiose work needed? Explanations have to do with geopolitics and economy. For many centuries, the Danube rivermouths had been under the control of the Ottoman Empire, which was not so keen on conducting large-scale construction works.



    Russias unabated offensive towards the south that began in the first half of the 18th century proved effective, pushing the Ottoman influence further south. However, Russia, which became the guaranteeing power for the Romanian Principalities after the Adrianopol Peace Treay in 1829, did not deem Danube as being important for its economy. Navigation in the area where River Danube flowed into the Black Sea was a difficult one, while the trade flow was scarce, if not chaotic. Alluvial sediments at the Danube rivermouths were a hindrance to a systematic, safe and controlled navigation process. So complex and multidisciplinary was the work of the European Danube Commissions chief engineer, Charles Hartley, that the supervisor of the grandiose project for the rearrangement of the Danube was dubbed ” the father of the Danube”.



    Constantin Ardeleanu:


    “For River Danube, what the engineers did, under the supervision of Hartley, was not only a work of utmost importance, it was also a scientific one. The Danube Delta is one of the worlds best-known sites having the form of a delta proper, if we try to understand how nature works. Those people were not just engineers who built several dams in Sulina, they were also prominent scientists who first understood how a delta worked: what the amount was, of the alluvial sediments it carried, how that amount was distributed among the three main arms of the Danube, what had to be done so that the Danube could become a navigable waterway for big tonnage vessels. It was a work of understanding a river, prior to becoming, in Hartleys own words, a work of taming and transforming it for the benefit of human communities.



    Rearranging the Danube Delta and the emergence of the Sulina Canal meant the opening up to the sea of Romanian territories. From an economic point of view, it was the “breath of fresh air” the Romanian state was granted, for its own projects.


    (Translation by Eugen Nasta)