At the head of the same Bystrica valley the state built a dam. The Nová Bystrica reservoir was constructed between 1983 and 1989, and to make room for it two upland villages had to go: Riečnica, which was joined to Nová Bystrica in 1981 and abolished as a settlement in 1985, and Harvelka. Their people were moved out and their houses came down, and the water covers the fields where they stood. This is the trade the twentieth century made all over Slovakia — Orava had done the same thing forty years earlier — and it is worth being honest that it was a real loss to real families, not just an engineering decision. The reservoir now supplies drinking water to much of the Kysuce and to Žilina, which is why nobody is allowed to swim in it.V závere tej istej Bystrickej doliny postavil štát priehradu. Vodnú nádrž Nová Bystrica stavali v rokoch 1983 až 1989 a museli jej ustúpiť dve horské obce: Riečnica, ktorú v roku 1981 pripojili k Novej Bystrici a v roku 1985 ako sídlo zrušili, a Harvelka. Ľudí vysťahovali, domy zbúrali a polia, na ktorých stáli, dnes prikrýva voda. Túto výmenu robilo dvadsiate storočie po celom Slovensku — Orava si tým prešla o štyridsať rokov skôr — a treba úprimne povedať, že pre konkrétne rodiny to bola skutočná strata, nie iba inžinierske rozhodnutie. Nádrž dnes zásobuje pitnou vodou veľkú časť Kysúc aj Žilinu, a práve preto sa v nej nesmie kúpať.
