Amid a punishing heatwave and severe drought, Budapest shuts off city fountains and urges water conservation while Hungary’s primary nuclear power plant is forced to restrict output. <\/p>\n
Budapest authorities shut down 40 city fountains and artificial waterfalls, as reported on Monday by the Daily News Hungary portal. Facing intensifying drought and a heatwave in Hungary, the mayor of the capital, Gergely Karacsony, appealed to residents on Monday to conserve water.<\/p>\n
Hungary is saving water.<\/p>\n
Peter Dezsenyi, managing director of the municipal company FOKERT, responsible for maintaining green areas, reported that in connection with the introduction of emergency water consumption restrictions, a climate crisis response plan is currently being developed.<\/p>\n
In a typical, hot August, watering parks and gardens can account for up to 10 percent of total municipal drinking water consumption, he explained. This consumption must now be significantly reduced while simultaneously minimizing environmental damage, he added.<\/p>\n
Dezsenyi noted that Budapest’s parks, trees, and gardens constitute a living natural resource with an estimated value of 400 billion forints (approx. 1.1 billion euros), built over the last 100-150 years, and letting them die would mean losses that would take years to recover.<\/p>\n
The Budapest municipal official noted that lawns are not treated as a priority because grass can usually regenerate after a drought period as long as its root system survives. He added that the priority is watering young trees and covering the soil with mown grass, wood chips, hay, or other organic material, which limits evaporation and protects the soil from overheating, making it one of the simplest and most effective ways to save water.<\/p>\n
The mayor of the Hungarian capital assured on Monday that there are currently no water shortages recorded in Budapest and no restrictions have been introduced for residents in this regard so far. Although Karacsony assured that the Budapest waterworks company is currently able to ensure water supplies to all consumers, he appealed to residents to save water.<\/p>\n
Recent decisions made by the Hungarian government in response to the ongoing drought in the country banned, among other things, the watering of sports fields and the filling of swimming pools. Despite this, as the weekly “HVG” reported on Monday, several stadiums watered their pitches, ensuring that water from deep wells or rainwater was used for irrigation. However, the weekly noted that July was marked by prolonged, dry heatwaves and precipitation totals below the multi-year average.<\/p>\n
Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said in a video posted on Monday on Facebook that the Paks nuclear power plant can operate at its current, limited capacity until Monday or Tuesday. Magyar stressed that this is very good news, pointing out that its complete shutdown can still be avoided on one of the days with the highest energy demand, thanks to which the Hungarian energy system will not lose another 240 megawatts of electricity.<\/p>\n
The prime minister added that due to the expected further drop in the water level of the Danube, there is still a risk of the power plant being shut down, but work is underway to keep the last turbine running for as long as possible while maintaining maximum safety. Full nuclear safety guarantees are a fundamental requirement, on which there is no room for compromise and which will always remain the most important, the prime minister emphasized.<\/p>\n
Today and in the coming days, we will – as far as possible – limit or shift electricity consumption falling between 5:00 PM and 10:00 PM to other times. It is enough to simply plan the use of devices with a higher power consumption a few hours earlier or later, the head of the Hungarian government instructed.<\/p>\n
The politician noted that on Sunday, Hungarian citizens, companies, local governments, and institutions jointly saved 700 megawatts of energy, which corresponds to the power of one and a half energy blocks of the Paks power plant.<\/p>\n
The facility has four blocks with a total capacity of approximately 2000 MW. The capacity of block no. 1 was reduced by 254 MW on Monday evening. A day later, the power plant limited the capacity of block no. 3 by 237 MW, and on Wednesday this block was temporarily completely shut down. On Thursday, the capacity of block no. 2 was reduced by 50 percent, and it is currently the only operating block of the power plant.<\/p>\n
The plant generates nearly half of the electricity in Hungary. Water from the Danube is used to cool the facility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amid a punishing heatwave and severe drought, Budapest shuts off city fountains and urges water conservation while Hungary’s primary nuclear power plant is forced to restrict output. Water Restrictions in Budapest Budapest authorities shut down 40 city fountains and artificial waterfalls, as reported on Monday by the Daily News Hungary portal. Facing intensifying drought and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expat-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bizonews.com\/pl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}