Cyanobacterial and algal blooms lead to the deterioration of freshwater ecosystems but also generate technical problems in water management in the industry. Power plants often use freshwater lakes and reservoirs as a source of cooling water and in the case of cogeneration stations (combined heat and power) also as a source of agents for heating energy distribution. A preliminary research in one of the heat and power stations in eastern Poland which uses water from suffering with algal blooms reservoir was carried out in April 2011. The study was focused on the changes in the phytoplankton quantitative and qualitative structure as well as in basic physico- -chemical parameters along the water treatment line, which consists of several stages serving as sampling points (from the pump station to the purified water tank). The initial phytoplankton biomass in the reservoir was high (fresh biomass: 65.8 mg dm-3, chlorophyll a: 146.7 μg dm-3) with diatoms prevailing (98% of the total biomass) from which the most numerous were: Cyclotella comta and Aulacoseira granulata. After several stages of the purification process (sedimentation, biocide addition, flocculation, gravel filtering, ion exchange) the water still consisted a considerable amount of algae (fresh biomass: 2.48 mg dm-3, chlorophyll a: 6.0 μg dm-3). However, the final biomass in purified water tank (after reversed osmosis process) was very low (fresh biomass: 0.03 mg dm-3, chlorophyll a: 0.1 μg dm-3). Results had shown that high algal biomass in the water used in power generation plant is difficult to remove and consequently requires considerable technical (thus also economical) efforts to adjust the water for the industrial use.