Record-Low Waters Expose the Cost of Hungary’s Two-Century Drainage Legacy

Lake Velence sits at 20 centimetres, beaches are shut and 99% of the country is in severe drought — but experts say climate change is only half the story

GÁRDONY — A fisherman stepped off his boat in a small harbour on Lake Velence last week and climbed a dock plank that had turned sharply steep as the water fell to record lows.

Árpád Selmeci said manoeuvring even a modest fishing boat on Hungary’s third-largest lake has become steadily harder, with the water level down to roughly 20 centimetres (8 inches) — far beneath the 150 centimetres (5 feet) considered optimal for August. Swimming beaches around the lake, long a draw for tourists, have been closed.

“I’ve lived on Lake Velence since I was a child, and I’ve never seen the water so low,” said Selmeci, 58, describing the situation as terrible and saying his heart aches constantly.

The lake’s retreat forms part of a wider water crisis facing Hungary as lengthening droughts and heatwaves driven by climate change batter Europe. Wildfires burned across the continent this summer from the United Kingdom to Greece, while in Hungary the drought has cut crop yields, triggered drinking water shortages and threatened to force the shutdown of the country’s only nuclear power plant.

A legacy of draining away water

Diminished rainfall linked to human-driven climate change accounts for only part of the problem. Specialists say Hungary’s entrenched practice of channelling water off the landscape and draining natural wetlands has left it acutely exposed as droughts grow more frequent and severe.

Around 99% of Hungarian territory currently lies under severe or extreme drought conditions, according to the national meteorological service, while desertification — the retreat of vegetation under intense heat and scant rainfall — threatens much of the Great Hungarian Plain.

That marks a striking reversal for a country where more than a quarter of the land is low-lying terrain that naturally holds precipitation, and whose numerous rivers and streams once made it abundant in freshwater. A 2023 study published in the journal Nature put Hungary’s historical wetland loss at more than 80%.

Zsuzsanna Ujj, a biodiversity policy specialist and project coordinator with Friends of the Earth Hungary, said the country has not managed its waters well over the past two centuries.

A principal factor is Hungary’s network of drainage canals, which extends beyond 40,000 kilometres (25,000 miles) — a distance greater than the circumference of the Earth. The system carries accumulated precipitation away from fields, wetlands and soil to clear ground for agriculture and other activity.

Prioritising drainage over natural flooding cycles has driven a sustained decline in the water table and dried out both wetlands and topsoil. With less moisture available to evaporate, the air itself becomes drier, further suppressing the prospects for localised rainfall.

Ujj noted that Hungary ranks among Europe’s most drought-exposed nations and 16th worldwide, according to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report. The country, she said, needs to realign its water management by shifting from a drainage-based approach to one centred on retention.