Small Water Reservoirs – Sources of Water or Problems?

The design of small water reservoirs in Slovakia and neighbouring countries has common origins in the middle of the last century. Most of them were an alternative source of water for irrigation of field crops. Nowadays, we have to face new problems, such as the problems with the design of hydrological data and real current discharges, the problems with original and new design of the flood wave for the solution of the safety overflow. All of Q₁₀₀ flows recorded nowadays are much higher than those which had been designed and built. The safety overflows no longer answer the purpose of the contemporary flows. The problems with the Framework Directive are also important – small water reservoirs are not resolved in the Directive as the water bodies of stagnant water because they have an area of less than 0.5 km². The same problem is also with the preservation of continuity of the flow and the fact that they should let the fish pass. Unfortunately, the state, administrators of small dams, operators and nature conservationists have different points of view on the above-mentioned problems. The article elaborates these problems and suggests possible solutions to the problems.