Environment : Dirtying the Waters : Bad air and polluted lakes and rivers are legacies of Communist rule in Poland. Women are even advised to leave Krakow during pregnancy.

Wojciech Garlej, a 24-year-old driver, is standing patiently in line to pay for something that should be the birthright of anyone living in a European capital at the end of the 20th Century: clean drinking water.

“The water that’s for free in the taps is not fit for drinking, it’s so polluted. It’s simply dirty and has a funny smell,” says Garlej after buying 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of specially treated well water.

Like Garlej, hundreds of Warsaw residents head every day to a small building in the city’s ritzy Mokotow district to fill canisters with water that meets the highest purity standards. They pay 300 zlotys--or 1.3 cents--for each liter (about a quart).

Even that tiny sum mounts up for 70-year-old pensioner Halina Fondalinska, who purchases five liters every other day. She resents paying for water but says “what you get through the pipes doesn’t even classify as water. When you make tea with this well water, it’s really tea.”

Bad drinking water is only one of the many penalties Poles are still paying for 45 years of environmental damage done by the negligent Communist system.

A report prepared by the Polish Environment Ministry for the United Nations concedes that Poland’s air pollution is among the worst in Europe.

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Between 1987 and 1989, for example, Poland was responsible for 10% of the total emissions of sulfur dioxide--a key ingredient of acid rain--on the Continent. Much of the blame falls on use of brown coal for home heating and electricity generation. Over 80% of the forests in Poland have been damaged by acid rain.

Within Poland there are some particularly black holes. Heavily industrial Katowice province, in southern Poland, which represents only 2.1% of the country’s territory, emits 20% to 25% of its sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and dust. The Katowice region is considered the most polluted in Europe.

Air and water contamination are so serious in nearby Krakow that pregnant women are often advised by their doctors to leave the city during pregnancy.

As for water, the Environment Ministry report called the quality of surface water in the country “tragic.” Like visitors to a Third World country, foreigners in the Polish capital are warned by locals not to drink from the tap. Not that anyone would be tempted by what comes out of the spigot. It emerges in hues ranging from pale yellow to deep rust. In some neighborhoods, it reeks of chlorine.

The people who operate Warsaw’s water treatment plants argue that they bring the water up to World Health Organization standards or better before sending it out to homes and factories. But by the time it’s traveled through antiquated pipes, bacteria, excessive iron and other dangerous chemicals may be swept along.

“Although the water meets the standards, unfortunately the smell and taste of it is not too good,” admits Bozena Mistag, director of the water-quality laboratory at Warsaw’s Northern Water Treatment Plant.

A major problem is the raw material the water treatment plants receive. Only 4% of Poland’s rivers and lakes contain water clean enough to drink even after boiling. A third of the country’s rivers are so polluted that their waters cannot even be used for industrial purposes because they corrode metal. Water from two-thirds of residential wells in Polish villages is undrinkable.

The Vistula River, from which Warsaw gets much of its drinking water, often fails to meet even the lowest standards of water for any use--never mind drinking. And for consumers downstream, it’s even worse. Warsaw is the only European capital other than Albania’s Tirana to dump raw sewage into its main river.

As a consequence, Poland is the worst contributor--among 14 countries--to Baltic Sea pollution. It bears the dubious distinction of having 38 identified “hot spots” where factories and towns pour pollutants into rivers that empty into the Baltic.

Polish authorities estimate that they need $6.4 billion to clean up the country’s contribution to Baltic pollution--money the government does not have.

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At Warsaw’s Northern Water Treatment Plant, manager Jan Grzymkowski points out the disgusting murky gray-brown color of the water taken in from Zegrzenski Lake--not far from the spot where numerous villages and small towns dump their raw sewage.

“Our main problem is to get rid of the color of the water and the high amount of organic substances in the water,” he says. The water is treated with ozone, one of the most modern methods available. Still, that’s no guarantee of quality.

“The quality of the water when it leaves our plant is much higher than when it reaches your home,” Grzymkowski admits.

This is one reason so many Warsaw residents head for wells that deliver water that was trapped in rocks in the Oligocene period.

Unfortunately, the Health Ministry warns that even water from these Oligocene wells can be dangerous. Of 50 such wells in the Polish capital, 23 were found to be polluted; several have been closed.

Despite the grim picture, Alicija Lopatek, head of environmental hygiene for the Health Ministry, insists that Polish tap water, although unappetizing to the eye, “doesn’t endanger health.”

But many residents think otherwise. Ecology activist Barbara Kitta-Gajkowska says her chronic stomach problems disappeared two years ago when she stopped using tap water.

Grzymkowski says: “The only solution is for the government to force factories and towns to build sewage treatment plants so they don’t dump raw sewage into the rivers we have to drink from.”