Budapest sees fivefold water‑use rise in districts during heat wave, exposing Hungary's water‑loss problem

A recent heat wave caused water consumption in several Buda districts of Budapest to surge up to five times the normal level, while intake in the city’s large housing estates changed only by a few percent. The city’s water utility, which supplies around two million people through 847,000 connections and produces over 172 million m³ of drinking water annually, reported that the spike was driven by garden watering, pool filling and cooling of concrete surfaces. Despite the Danube’s low water level, the supply remained secure, though officials noted a 20 % decline in river flow over the past four decades.

At the national level, experts warned that Hungary loses roughly three and a half times the volume of Lake Balaton each year, with more water exiting the Carpathian Basin than entering via rivers, groundwater and precipitation. This "leaky basin" situation is a legacy of 19th‑century flow‑regulation and drainage projects that transformed the landscape for agriculture but now drains water away rapidly. Calls were made for a shift from disposing of surplus water to retaining more, especially as recent months have seen significantly below‑average rainfall, worsening water scarcity concerns.