Quarries near Bereza town

There are several chalk quarries in various parts of Belarus. Surely everyone has heard about the famous Belarusian "Maldives" in Grodno region, Volkovysk district. However, there are still such chalk quarries near Bereza town, Brest Region.

History of creation

Bereza quarries are not of natural but of artificial origin, which dates us straight to the 30-ies of the last century. At this time the local Pans were active here, who became the development initiators of the quarries for the extraction and processing of chalk.

This process was difficult, since the poor peasants had no appropriate equipment at that time and were forced to work by hand, using traditional pick-axes and shovels.

In 1939, the quarries’ area was nationalized and later, in 1961, the Novo-Berezovsky lime plant started to function there. At that time, the quarrying for the enterprises needs continued. It is believed that four quarries were originally excavated in this way, but two of them came together in the last decade. Now there are three of them.

The plants had worked until 1990, and after its closing the infrastructure was purchased by the company «Triple» and the quarries themselves were abandoned. Over the years, they began to fill with water until they turned into a lake with turquoise-greenish tint, which we can see today.

Three lakes

Locals and visitors prefer to swim in the first career, which is the most equipped and has sufficiently gentle slopes. In some places, there are even special ladders to facilitate the entry into the water.

The banks of the second artificial lake are steeper. The average depth is about 18 meters, we can see the bottom (except for the central part where there are long, up to 17 meters algae) due to the high water transparency (they have spring origin) in the absence of wind. The second quarry is especially popular with scuba divers, offering a quite impressive depth differences, and among anglers due to the huge variety of fish.

The largest, the third quarry is located close to the "SPP Berezovsky" territory. It is also the deepest one, and reaches a level of 40 meters depth in some places.

Despite the popularity of chalk quarries among swimmers and anglers, you should be quite cautious as uneven and sometimes with gaps bottom can be dangerous.