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A man lies on a bench at a beach. © Wolfgang Kumm/dpa/symbol picture
Increasingly falling water levels in streams, rivers and lakes can have serious effects on the ecosystem. Numerous cities and districts already ban water withdrawals. Without rain, there is also a risk that individual sections will dry out.
Darmstadt/Giessen/Kassel – For weeks now, more and more municipalities have been warning people to be careful with water and issue decrees. Water withdrawals from surface waters are prohibited. The June balance of the German weather service was clear: too much sun, too warm, too little precipitation in the area. And July brought hot days with sometimes well over 30 degrees. The consequence is an increasing drought. Not only the soil or the forests are affected. The waters are also increasingly feeling the effects.
The south of Hesse is currently particularly affected. “The southern Hessian streams are running out of water,” the regional council in Darmstadt recently warned. Water withdrawals should be avoided. “Since the rivers Main and Rhine still carry sufficient water, they are excluded from the order,” says a general order from the district of Groß-Gerau. It prohibits the withdrawal of water from streams, rivers and lakes.
But the problem is also on the agenda in other parts of the country, according to a survey by the German Press Agency. “During the dry summer months, there is always the situation that small watercourses run dry,” said the regional council in Gießen. However, the water authority at the regional council currently has no such reports.
“The discharges in the primarily smaller bodies of water and headwaters in the administrative district of Kassel are currently below the “mean low water level””, according to the Kassel regional council. It is therefore necessary to be particularly sensitive when it comes to water abstraction, and some districts have already issued bans on abstraction. So far, however, there are no known sections of water that have dried up to a large extent.
“In the absence of precipitation, it cannot be ruled out that individual sections of water will run dry,” said the Hessian State Agency for Nature Conservation, Environment and Geology (HLNUG) on request. Currently, the water levels and flows across the country are three quarters of the levels on the surface waters in the middle range. In a quarter there is low water.
Counties are already sounding the alarm. “The extreme drought of the last few weeks has led to very low flow rates in the surface waters in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district. In addition, the number of running waters falling dry is increasing significantly,” the district said. And the neighboring district of Groß-Gerau also recently issued an order. Reason: “Due to the persistent drought and the lack of precipitation for weeks or months, very low water levels have set in the waters.” A change in this situation is currently not in sight. There is a risk that the balance of nature will be permanently disturbed.
“Lack of precipitation and reduced or no groundwater inflow leads to less dilution in the smaller rivers and streams and thus to higher concentrations of pollutants in the water,” said the HLNUG. So far, no limit values have been exceeded, but it cannot be ruled out in some areas. According to the Darmstadt Regional Council, living conditions are deteriorating due to low discharges and strong warming of the water. “Especially in small bodies of water such as streams, there is a risk that additional water withdrawals will deprive the fish and other aquatic organisms of any chance of survival and they will then die off.” dpa
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