The Inninger Bach was last dry.
Because the water level in the Wörthsee is very low, water no longer flows into the stream by itself.
Lower nature conservation authorities, the municipality, fire brigade, fish tenants and citizens did everything they could to save the surviving fish and the protected river mussel.
Bachern/Inning
– Alexander Dietz (60) can remember that the Inninger Bach was once dry.
"But that must have been 50 years ago.
I was a kid," he says.
Dietz and his son are fish leaseholders of the Inninger Bach, whose fishing rights belong to the Count of Toerring.
The creek itself is owned by the municipality.
Dietz, who is a forester at Toerring, got the lease like his father and grandfather before him.
Currently he is daily at the last waterless creek.
He and other innings have already taken out more than 100 dead fish and put live ones in a pool so that they survive.
The lower nature conservation authority in the district office is also alarmed.
Their department head, Ursula Madeker, asked the community on Tuesday for the volunteer fire brigade in Bachern to lay hoses to "pump" water from Lake Wörthsee into the creek.
Their primary concern is the river mussel, which, in varying numbers, has felt at home along the entire length of the stream.
A few days before the drought began, an investigation by the Ammersee Water and Wastewater Works (AWA) and the State Office for the Environment was completed, which gave cause for optimism.
"The result is now probably obsolete," she says, fearing that most of the mussels have died.
And if not, wild boars have probably helped themselves in the waterless creek areas.
Innings nature conservation guards, LBV members and a Wörthsee fisherman were recently able to convert 71 mussels into a safe pool.
"It was a lot of work over the past three days," says Ursula Madeker, who is delighted with the "great teamwork" of everyone involved.
"But we're still making progress," she says.
We, that is also the Inninger Georg Eisenmann or Lukas Welzmüller, who set up aeration pumps at the pools until late at night and set up a water wheel at the lower pond by the Edeka so that these water points can be supplied with oxygen and the last fish can survive there.
Andreas Streicher, the only commercial fisherman in town, provided the material for this.
"It wouldn't have worked without him," says Welzmüller.
Everyone involved is now hoping that the announced rain will fall on Friday.
The water levels are critical.
Ursula Madeker has been thinking about an automated solution for the Bacherner lock for a few years to stabilize the so-called central water of the Wörthsee.
This has steadily decreased over the years.
"If the water drains more slowly from the Wörthsee into the Inninger Bach, then the lake would have longer water at low tide," she believes.
The level is currently below the lock threshold, which is why the fire brigade has laid four hoses that suck off water up to a certain height.
Using the same principle that is used to drain petrol from the tank via a hose.
Maximilian Bleimaier, CEO of the AWA, is also following the events with concern: "It's time to start saving water." He knows that many people bordering the creek, not only on the Inninger Bach, use the water for their gardens.
In some cases, soccer fields are also irrigated with it.
"You have to think about something," he says cautiously.
With the current water levels in the waters, nobody will be helped if this continues.
Even if it is a drought event that may have been repeated every 50 years before, no one knows whether the intervals will shorten in the face of climate change.
Naturally, he also looks at water that you cannot see – the groundwater from which drinking water is extracted.
"The groundwater level is still stable," says Bleimaier, with a view to the AWA association area, because the situation is not so rosy elsewhere.
The low point was reached in 2010.
In Herrsching Nord, for example, the level is currently about a meter higher than it was then – but has been falling slightly for some time.
His appeal: "To prevent water stress, you should start saving." And a rain shower alone won't change anything.
