1964, and the socialist decades A reservoir, and a factoryPriehrada a fabrika

In 1964 a water reservoir was built on the Slatina above the town. It is not a leisure lake and never was: it supplies drinking water to a wide area of the region, so bathing and boating are prohibited and the shore is a protected water-management zone. The other change of these decades was a heavy engineering works in the valley, a ZŤS plant, part of the same Czechoslovak machine-building network as the factory at Detva. Between them the reservoir and the factory did what the whole socialist period did to the Podpoľanie: they gave people wages and running water, and they pulled them off the lazy and down into the valley.V roku 1964 postavili nad mestom na Slatine vodárenskú nádrž. Nie je to a nikdy nebolo rekreačné jazero: zásobuje pitnou vodou široké okolie, takže kúpanie a člnkovanie sú zakázané a breh je chráneným vodohospodárskym pásmom. Druhou zmenou týchto desaťročí bol strojársky závod v doline, podnik ZŤS, súčasť tej istej československej strojárskej siete ako fabrika v Detve. Priehrada a fabrika spolu urobili s Podpoľaním to, čo s ním urobilo celé socialistické obdobie: dali ľuďom výplatu a vodovod a stiahli ich z lazov dole do doliny.