The investment into environmental projects mirrors the level of involvement into the environmental protection. The investment, together with introducing and implementing environmental laws, is a sign that the projects comply with reality. In Poland, the investments in environment and water management projects have been in the doldrums for many years. After the dynamic increase in the early 90s when they reached as much as 2% of GNP, they slumped to a mere 0.8% in 2002. There has been slight increase since then but no recovery has taken place on 1988 figures. The author discusses the causes and ways of improvement.