In the Czech Republic and the rest of the European Union, all of this expansion is starting to take a toll on the roads, by far the largest conduit for transport.

According to a recent EU estimate, by 2010 the congestion and pollution arising from highway shipping is expected to consume 1 percent of the EU's total gross domestic product. By 2015, transport between Germany and the Czech Republic is projected to double.

One potential solution is flowing lazily from its roots at the Krkonoše Mountains in a wide bend that brings it northwest through Bohemia to Saxony: the Labe (Elbe) River. The government has extensive EU-supported plans to reduce the volatility of the river's water levels, making it a reliable waterway on par with other major European rivers.

"Water transportation in the Czech Republic is in crisis now," said Miroslav Šefara, head of the Waterway Directorate. "The river dries out in the summer, and barge owners have to stop their business, and they never know how much time they'll lose — sometimes two months, sometimes seven. It depends on the weather."

As a result, shipping on the river is stagnant, varying between 2 percent and 5 percent of imports and exports.

Avoiding the rapids

A first step in the state's improvements, a 3-kilometer (1.86-mile) canal circumventing a series of rapids in the river near Pardubice, east Bohemia, moved forward Jan. 15, with the announcement that two contractors had been selected to fulfill the 1.8 billion Kč ($83.5 million) contract. Construction could begin by midyear.

The canal has its origins in the First Republic, when the government smoothed out the Labe's uneven water levels and dredged its bed. But plans for the canal were dropped, interrupted by World War II and an eastward-focused communist government with little interest in trade with Hamburg, the Labe's port to the North Sea.

Ivo Toman, deputy commissioner for the Pardubice region, envisions Pardubice becoming a modern logistical center of the type now encouraged by the EU, with rail, river and road connections all intersecting and competing at a mutual port.

While it is typical for rail and road to compete on price, shipping by river was long relegated to moving bulk materials long distances — minerals, oil, chemicals, animal feed. But, in the past decade, river shipping has gained an unexpected viability from the rise of intermodal shipping, which allows goods to be easily swapped between multiple types of transport, thanks to one innovation: the shipping container.

International shipping is now dominated by containers, the long steel boxes that fit together like Lego blocks on enormous ships sailing from, for example, Shanghai to Hamburg. These containers, once known only to ports, are increasingly being shipped within Europe, cheaper to move, by scale, than individual pallets.

Barges on other rivers are beginning to carry these containers, driving down transportation prices. For example, the cheapest transportation in Europe is available along the Rhine River, where roads, rail and river all compete against each other, said Jiří Aster, director of two ports on the Labe near the German border.

"The same could be true along the Labe," he said.

But, while the Pardubice canal is an important improvement, regular shipping will not increase on the Labe until a river lock is constructed in Děčín, a port in north Bohemia.

Germany has agreed to regularly dredge its part of the Labe, keeping it at a regular depth of 1.4 meters (4.6 feet) for nearly the entire year. But, because of unfinished work on the river between Ústí nad Labem and Germany, the Labe remains far too shallow, too frequently, Šefara said.

The lock would allow this part of the river to be flooded to navigable levels during the dry season for six hours at a time, allowing barges to continue with little delay and meeting the terms of the agreement with Germany.

With both the lock and canal constructed, the Waterway Directorate projects the annual volume of transportation on the Labe to increase from 1 million to 3 million metric tons.

Deadlocked

Opponents of the government's plans fear the environmental impact of the projects is not worth what they call a marginal economic gain for the Czech Republic.

"The route of the canal runs through an area called Slavíkovy ostrovy, which is a habitat for almost 60 plant and animal species listed as endangered," said Miroslav Patrik, of the environmental group Děti země (Children of the Earth).

The area should be protected by the EU's Natura 2000 network, but the Czech Republic did not file for this protection, Patrik said.

"The commodities expected to be shipped along the canal can be transported on the already existing — and gradually modernizing — Czech railway network, which is far from reaching its full capacity," he said.

What the group doesn't dispute is river transport is the most environmentally friendly form of transportation available in Europe.

External costs — emissions, noise, accidents, maintenance — for shipping by rail are 50 percent higher than by barge, and by road it's 350 percent higher, said Michele Cercone, spokesman for EU Transportation Commissioner Jacques Barrot.

It remains to be seen if the Green Party, now a part of the governing coalition and in charge of the Environmental Ministry (under party Chairman Martin Bursík), will seek to halt the Labe constructions.

"We don't support the construction of huge and unnecessary waterworks," party spokeswoman Eva Rolečková said. "We want to minimize damage to the Czech landscape."

Šefara has a counter example, believing the Green Party would, by opposing Labe shipping, support increased road use.

"Let's take the example of Lovochemie Lovosice, which exports 250,000 tons [275,000 short tons] of fertilizer a year," he said. "When the summer is hot, their ships can't sail and transport of the fertilizer is moved to the busy roads of the Ústecký region."

Hela Balínová contributed to this report.