Within the framework of Working Group G3 "Accidental Pollution", on 4th of September 2017 International Commission for the Protection of the Odra River against Pollution (ICPO) organized a joint Polish, Czech and German field exercise regarding cross-border hazardous contamination elemination on border waters. Parallel to this event, another exercise was held which regarded passing the reports between Main International Warning and Alert Centers (MIWAC).

The practical field exercise was held in Ratzdorf and involved elemination of water pollutant, in this case an oil stain from a tanker accident. Representatives from  competent institutions, fire fighting brigades and police from Poland and Germany took active participation in the event.

In the time of field exercise, the representatives of MIWAC met in Eisenhüttenstadt National Fire Service School to perform another exercise involving alert report transfering in case of an accident on the waters of international Odra River basin. During this exercise, the representatives used guidelines of communication routes for transfering reports between ICPO contracting parties in accordance to Working Group G3 document "International Warning and Alarming Plan for Oder".

On the 5th of September an international workshop was held in Collegium Polonicum, Słubice which included the summary of exercises and the discussion about fire-water retention topic. The workshop was organized by ICPO in cooperation with UNECE Joint Expert Group. The workshop was divided in three thematic blocks:

• Measures to prevent accidental water pollution caused by fires – Fire-water retention
• Regulations for fire-water retention in the Oder river basin
• UNECE Safety Guidelines and Good Practices for Fire-water Retention

The gallery from the events can be found below. In the near future, we will share a video about the evaluation of the field exercise for which we would like to thank the representatives of Czech delegation in ICPO Working Group G3.

We would like to thank all the speakers for their presentations and all who were involved in organization of both exercies and workshop for their help. We hope that both the exercise and the workshop were interesting to all participants.