Drought summer in Germany: is drinking water becoming scarce?

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Fields irrigation in Pinnow, Brandenburg

Simmern-Rheinböllen, Nieder-Beerbach, Merenberg: When such provincial nests make it into the news, it's the summer slump. This year it's not about lost caimans or fallen flower pots. In the places mentioned, drinking water has become so scarce that the authorities have had to issue strict rules on saving.

In Lauenau, Lower Saxony, the water reservoirs were even completely empty a few days ago. The fire brigade ensured that at least the toilets could be flushed by tanker. The corona pandemic was obviously to blame for the current bottleneck: Many residents were on vacation at home, diligently watering their gardens and filling their newly acquired swimming pools.

Are Lauenau and the other places just isolated cases? Or will drinking water soon be scarce everywhere in Germany? At least not in the short term.

"Even with long periods of drought and extreme heat, there is no threat of nationwide supply bottlenecks," assures Ingbert Liebing, General Manager of the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU). More than 70 percent of the drinking water comes from deep groundwater sources. And according to the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), of 1253 so-called groundwater bodies, only 52 failed to qualify as "good quantitative status" in 2016. "With exceptions in some regions, we are still a country where there is no water stress," says Corinna Baumgarten from the UBA in Dessau.

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