The Water Dam in Solina

The San River development project was created in 1921 and was prepared by Karol Pomianowski from the Lviv University of Technology. His vision began to be realized in the 1920s, but the war outbreak interrupted the works. Before the works of the Solina Dam began again, the construction of the dam in Myczkowce became a testing ground. In 1960 the works in Solina began. For its place a necking on the River San between Horbek Mountain and Jawor was chosen. First, was choosen a residential housing development for 2,000 workers was built – now these are holiday accommodations. For the first 4 years (1960 – 1964) focused on the works related to foundations building, in this time the preparation of the site for flooding also began – people from the villages of Solina, Teleśnica Sanna, Horodek, Sokole, Chrewt and parts of Wołkowyi were displaced, the buildings were destroyed, forests grubbed up, cemeteries were liquidated. During the next four years included building up the dam corpus, building a power plant and building an installation of hydropower equipment took place. On 20^th of July 1968, the power plant was put into service. The dam is 82 m high and 664 m long and it is so called heavy-type dam (weighs more than 2 million tons), gravity one – which means that its effective weight fights against the water flow. Cubature volume of the dam is 760,000 m3. Inside there are corridors called the galleries with the joint length of 2,5 km and 4 turbines: 2 classic and 2 reverse, which can also operate as pumps with a total power of 200 MW. The power plant is pumped storage, which means it can work only during hours of the greatest energy demand and can pump water from Lake Myczkowieckie, back to Lake Solińskie, completing the losses. The dam's crown is made available free of charge for tourists and it is the most famous pedestrian street in Bieszczady Mountains.