Lake Otakar

Otakar is an artificial lake - a flooded lignite quarry adjacent to the younger Barbora quarry in the area of the former village of Staré Verneřice. The first lignite mine here was established in 1908. In the 1960s, when the Otakar quarry was extracting residual reserves, it re-exposed the Marie-Teresie drainage tunnel, but during the formation of the final slope as part of the reclamation, it was sealed again with clay material, which causes the accumulation of these mining waters. Their hydrostatic pressure thus saturates the final slope with this mining water and is the sole cause of the permanent instability of the final slope despite the remediation carried out. The Otakar quarry in Košťany was located at the top part of the western slope of the Lahošť ridge. From 1908 to 1966, it practically extracted all the reserves in this locality. Today, after flooding and reclamation, which took place in the 1970s and 1980s, it serves as a recreational water area. In 1981, an overflow was built between Otakar and Barbora, but it was damaged by the floods in 2002 and has not been fully restored.