This summer, European countries along the Danube have tried a variety of ways to deal with the consequences of the drying up of the big river – from blasting rocks to sinking barges – but none of this has solved the problem, writes Politico.
The water in the Danube fell to an extremely low level in August, and European Union governments are struggling to cope with the dramatic situation. Romanian authorities authorized the blasting of rocks to divert water to cool the Cernavoda nuclear power plant; the Hungarian government sank barges to keep water flowing past the Paks nuclear power plant; in Bulgaria, 180 tourists had to be evacuated from a ship that ran aground near the port city of Vidin.
The stakes are high – the Danube, Europe’s second-longest river, is vital for freight transport, drinking water supplies, agriculture and industry. Its waters cool large nuclear power plants and are used in hydroelectric power stations. The river basin covers 19 countries and millions of people need water, but droughts caused by climate change threaten to change everything.
Birgit Vogel, executive secretary of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR), said that forecasts show that such situations will happen more often, and that a more systematic look at water availability, demand, and conservation and resilience are needed. Even as droughts become a regular occurrence, Europe still lacks a single, binding policy to address water scarcity on the Danube and elsewhere. Responsibility is divided between national governments and river basin authorities, and is governed by a series of EU laws that environmental groups say are poorly enforced. Many of the bloc’s resilience measures are voluntary, not mandatory. Against this backdrop,
governments are turning to unilateral measures that could also harm their neighbors and the surrounding ecosystem.
Dimiter Koumanov, head of the Bulgarian river environmental NGO Balkanka, said that countries are using emergency measures without considering their wider consequences. He is particularly concerned about the impact of these measures and measures on drinking water in Bulgaria, and Koumanov said that the countries along the Danube do what they want, but the Bulgarians must pay the price.
Sara Johansson, a water policy expert at the European Environment Agency, said this summer was clear evidence of Europe’s unpreparedness for climate change. She said lost soil, degraded wetlands and destroyed ecosystems were turning the landscape into matchboxes waiting to ignite, while depleted rivers highlighted the vulnerability of the energy system.
Hungary’s Paks NPP produces about 40% of the country’s energy needs, while Romania’s Cernavoda NPP produces a fifth of its electricity. When the river’s water level is very low, governments have to deal not only with a water crisis but also with a potential energy crisis.
Hungary began work in August to reshape the riverbed and impound water to cool the plant.
Tamás Gruber, head of the WWF European Living Rivers Programme in Hungary, said it was a potentially useful intervention in the short term, but that there was not enough information available to assess the ecological consequences or the effectiveness of the design in the event of extreme low water flows in the future. He added that such a structure in the river could exacerbate water shortage problems downstream, and affect sediment transport, fish and other aquatic organisms.
Quick fixes to combat drought are mostly at the national level, and are very fragmented in the seven EU countries through which the Danube flows, as well as Serbia, Moldova and Ukraine. There are organisations that coordinate river management, such as the ICPDR, in which participating countries also have local authorities responsible for shipping, water management and environmental protection. They cooperate on monitoring and navigation issues, but still operate only within their national jurisdiction.
The EU Water Directive requires member states to protect and restore the bloc’s rivers, lakes and groundwater, and requires water management to be coordinated across river basins, not just national borders. But experts and water sector representatives have said the EU has failed to develop a common policy to improve preparedness for droughts at a time when dry and hot summers are becoming more common.
Brussels last year published a Water Resilience Strategy, which includes 50 measures to boost water security.
It also includes a promise from the European Commission to help member states with technical guidance on how to draw up drought management plans. However, such plans are not mandatory.
The EU’s main nature law stipulates that by 2030 Europe must have 25,000 kilometres of free-flowing rivers – meaning rivers not blocked by dams for power plants – but here too everything depends on the voluntary involvement of member states.
Asked about the drying up of the Danube, EU Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall told Politico that the priority now is to promote preparedness across the bloc, adding that the EU needs to assess whether current water management laws are fit for purpose, suggesting that they could be revised.
Gergely Patkó, an analyst at the Hungarian Water Management Association, described the cooperation between river basin authorities in different countries as good, and said the Water Directive helps with this, but warned that its revision could put the biggest burden on drinking water issues during drought crises.
Koumanov said the best solution would be to follow EU laws to the letter and make them stricter, aiming to protect natural water resources, but he also acknowledged that this was utopian. He added that one day the wooden heads in the EU would finally understand something, and he hopes it would not be too late.
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