This is how the channel across the Vistula was created. Three years collected in 6 minutes [WIDEO]

Posted On: November 5, 2022

“The Vistula Spit Pier is a strategic investment for Poland. Thanks to it, for the first time in Poland’s post-war history, it will be possible to influence the Vistula Lagoon by bypassing Russian territorial waters. The legitimacy of the government’s decision to launch this investment is particularly visible in the current geopolitical situation,” Infrastructure Minister Andrzej Adamczyk said in a statement sent to the PAP on Friday.

“We are opening the gap of the Vistula spit, we have been waiting for this moment for many years. On September 17, the ship channel will be launched. On this day, ships will have free access to all ports of the lagoon of the Vistula and, most importantly, to the seaport of Elbląg. In this way, the first, most important stage will be completed. of this investment “- added Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Marek Gróbarczyk, quoted in the press release.

The investor, ie the Maritime Office in Gdynia, announced that the construction of the navigation channel that connected the Vistula Lagoon with the Bay of Gdańsk was a spectacular investment from the very beginning. This is evidenced by both the wide and extremely diverse range of tasks to be performed, as well as the amount of material used. The project assumed the simultaneous construction of a protective port of the Gulf of Gdańsk and a navigation channel with a lock and the construction of closures as well as waiting stands of the Gulf of Gdańsk and the Vistula Lagoon, as well such as the construction of a new road system with movable steel bridges with a vertical axis of rotation, and even the construction of the so-called artificial island in the Vistula lagoon.

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“We can say that everything is buttoned up to the last button. It took us less than three years to build a passage through the Vistula Spit with an artificial island in the Vistula Lagoon. We did a lot of pre-investment work that lasted several years. We implemented the planned schedule as planned. This was possible thanks to the commitment, beyond the scope of normal work, of the team responsible for the implementation of the project, consisting of substantive employees of various specialties of the Maritime Office in Gdynia. I would like to thank them all for this huge amount of work,” Wiesław Piotrzkowski, the director of the Gdynia Maritime Office, was quoted in the statement as saying.

“We are happy to have completed the work according to the established schedule. The construction of the navigation channel and the artificial island is one of the most unusual hydrotechnical projects in Poland and we are extremely happy to have been involved in its implementation. ” – said Małgorzata Winiarek-Gajewska, quoted in the announcement. President of the NDI group.

Three years of construction of the canal through the spit of the Vistula

Photos of the channel just before its opening can be seen in this article.

The Chairman of NDI Group added that “the project has aroused great interest, therefore, together with the investor, we have tried to regularly inform the public about the progress of the work, as well as to share the experiences of implementation with the environment of engineers and students of technical universities”.

“Thanks to this, not only our staff, but also many interested people have been able to experience the solutions applied here in practice. On this occasion, I would like to congratulate and thank the entire team, who have put a lot of strength and heart in the implementation of this project” – she indicated.

The announcement said that the amount of materials used for its construction is impressive – it is 400 thousand. tons of stone armouring made on the breakwaters and almost 10 thousand. pieces of so-called x-blocks, i.e. prefabricated concrete elements arranged with precision to fight against dangerous waves during difficult weather conditions.

A unique technology in the world was used to build the breakwaters – prefabricated “x-block plus” elements. Previously, they were only used on the Afsluitdijk dam – the protection dam, which is the main dam and dyke in the Netherlands. There, however, they were on the water. On the other hand, on the Spit, they were put under water for the first time in the world. Divers worked there and heavy equipment was also used.

Each of these concrete elements (from 2.5 to 12 tons of mass) has its history and its number. A data sheet was created for each to know how it was created and how it was stored in case of problems during operation. Previously, a project had also been prepared, in which each block x found its place, defined by coordinates. Thanks to him, the x-blocks were stacked like blocks.

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“In addition to the construction of the protective harbor, a big challenge was also the construction of a shipping channel into which ships would enter from both the Gulf of Gdańsk and the Vistula Lagoon. The total length of the channel is about 1300 running meters, width at its widest point is 120 m, and depth – 5 m. To do this, it was necessary to dig, among other things, 800,000 cubic meters of material “- said Mariusz Janczewski, director of the construction of the NDI / Besix consortium of the general contractor.

The heart of your investment

As part of the construction of this element, the heart of this investment should also be made – a lock with four gates to close it. Each of them is composed of six segments, and each segment of 730 elements. A door weighs about 160 tons, and the heaviest of its elements – about 33 tons – adds Mariusz Janczewski.

The lock is probably the largest such structure in Poland – its length is less than 270 m, its width is 25 m, the depth reaches 6.5 m below water level, and the height of the walls with plugs is greater than 9 m.

An unusual element in the structure of the lock is not only its size, but also the way its gates move. The rope method was used here – thanks to rope winches, the steel doors move on specially made tracks in the bottom. The double gates, the so-called redundancy, make it possible to maintain security even in the event of failure of one of the lock gates.

However, the movement of ships would not have been possible without the Kapitanat, built at the canal, in which a superior control system was installed, including from large touch screens and emergency panels, which in the event of a breakdown will allow you to control the airlock doors or close or open a given bridge.

One of the largest hydrotechnical investments also concerned the construction of a road network with two swing bridges. It is one of the longest facilities of this type in Poland. Thanks to them, ship traffic will not interfere with car traffic along the sea channel. The total length of one of the two bridges over the tip of the Vistula is more than 60 m, and the weight of the steel structure of the system with counterweight is about 550-560 tons. Each of these bridges is made up of 44 elements that were fabricated in a structural steel prefabrication factory, delivered to the site and assembled in blocks. The heaviest of the individual elements weighed more than 48 tons. Despite such a particular structure and weight, the bridges are assembled to the nearest millimeter and balanced to the kilogram.

Importantly, the first of the bridges – the South Bridge – was due to be commissioned in June last year.

artificial island

“All of this makes this investment extremely complicated in terms of logistics. For example, nearly one million tonnes of hydrotechnical stone were delivered for the construction, which was integrated into the structure of the breakwaters and the envelope of the artificial island” – underlined Jacek Szymański , project manager of the NDI / Besix consortium.

Considering this volume of materials and the rate at which the contract was executed, which was 35 months, the project was really difficult. This required us to open several work fronts at the same time and perfect organization in terms of logistics. At its peak, around 400 people were employed on site, but several hundred additional people worked for this investment off site. In total, nearly 3,000 people took part in the work. employees – adds Jacek Szymański.

An additional element of this investment is an artificial island, where dredging and dredging materials will be collected. Interestingly, nature has already loved it – it is a habitat for birds and vegetation.

The Estonian island with dimensions of 1906 by 1166 m, a circumference of 4.9 km and an area of 180 hectares is one of the largest such islands in Poland. Only the area of steel sheet piles used to shape it and maintain the filling with sand from the dredging of the bottom of the fairway is almost 112.5 thousand square meters. m² – for comparison, they would cover almost 16 full-size football pitches.

In turn, one million tons of sand will be used for backfilling the dike, which would fill about 37,000 trucks. In addition, approximately 140,000 square meters were used for its construction. tons of hydrotechnical stone, which would fill 3.5 thousand. railway carriages.

The island “survived” two winters with the ice rush, proving that the selected structure and designed sections served their purpose and could be used safely for years to come. – said the entrepreneur.

The construction of the first stage of this investment has already been completed. Only clean-up work remains to be done, the Gdynia Maritime Office said.