As of: February 13, 2024, 10:23 a.m
By: Michael Seeholzer
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Split
Subject of dispute: Market Swabia's “Fountain II” brings the neighbors in Anzing to the barricades because it is located directly on the municipal border.
© Dziemballa
Communities have to rethink drinking water: How the vital supply in the Ebersberg district fuels conflicts and requires solidarity.
District
- In the past, every municipality in the Ebersberg district successfully cooked its own soup: supplying its citizens with water is one of the core tasks of a municipality that has to invest a lot of money for this vital service.
It gets this back from the consumer through production contributions and connection fees.
For a long time, the communities managed this on their own.
Decreasing groundwater levels over decades, a constantly growing population and the associated higher demand do not remain without consequences.
At the global level, the fight for water has long since begun.
But conflicts are now also emerging at the local level.
The water supply is in the process of dissolving individual municipal interests.
There are enough examples of this.
Of the 31 water protection areas within the district, eleven are located on the corridors of several municipalities.
This was the result of an inquiry from the Ebersberger Zeitung to the district office.
This has the potential for controversy.
Drinking water: Anzing and Markt Schwaben are already arguing
A year-long conflict has even reached the environmental committee of the Bavarian state parliament.
The municipalities of Anzing and Markt Schwaben are fighting over the commissioning of Well II. It is intended to become a second mainstay for the Markt Schwaben water supply, as Mayor Michael Stolze confirmed in an interview with our newspaper.
The problem is that Anzing farmers in Auhofen, Boden, Lindach and Staudach are affected by the water protection zone.
They fear losses in the cultivation of their land.
The Environment Committee considers this attitude to be justified.
Now we have to look for a solution that is affordable for everyone and it also has to be economical.
Ultimately, the Swabian water consumers have to pay for the effort required.
It's about large sums of money.
Investments totaling four million euros are currently pending in Grafing, it was announced at the most recent building committee meeting.
The money will go, among other things, into upgrading the well in Elkofen, where the annual extraction volume of 40,000 cubic meters is to be tripled in the future, as building authority manager Josef Niedermaier announced.
Water resources: desires from Munich, concerns about Deutsche Bahn
This fountain also plays a role in the Grafingen battle over the future course of the Brenner north route.
The city argues that a threat to this extraction point by the railway line would represent an infringement on municipal self-determination.
A sharp sword.
In this case, water law has become a means of combat.
The Grafingers themselves are affected elsewhere.
According to reports, the regional plan on Nettelkofener Flur threatens to designate a “priority area” for water production for the city of Munich.
“That would severely limit our development opportunities there,” warns Mayor Christian Bauer in an interview with EZ.
In demand: An area on Grafinger Flur, south of the B304 towards Wiesham/Nettelkofen, is being discussed to supply the state capital Munich.
© Rossmann
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Although the groundwater levels surprisingly recovered at the beginning of the year due to the persistent rainfall, Martin Grambow, long-time head of the water management department in the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment, still expects levels to fall in the long term.
He recently reported this at a lecture by the Ebersberg Women's Union in the Kugler Alm.
Expensive work and new determinations with potential for conflict
In the foreseeable future, the water protection areas of the cities of Ebersberg and Grafing, the Eglharting water procurement association, the Kirchseeon market, the municipalities of Glonn and Bruck and Markt Schwaben will be redesignated, the district office informs: “Among other things, the dimensioning and thus the spatial scope of water protection areas is important The direction of groundwater flow also plays a major role.
Groundwater does not stop flowing at municipal boundaries.
“It is therefore unavoidable that although the drinking water well is located in the territory of the municipality that receives the drinking water, the water protection area that serves to protect this well also extends to the territory of another municipality,” said the authority.
It is possible that the conflict between Anzing and Markt Schwaben is just a foretaste of further conflicts.
The district office said: “In principle, it is always desirable for the municipalities to communicate with each other.
But the municipalities have planning sovereignty and must adhere to the principle of thrift and cost-effectiveness.
According to Section 50 Paragraph 2 of the Water Resources Act (WHG), the water requirements of the public water supply should primarily be covered from local water resources.
In addition, part of the application documents for a water protection area process is always an examination of alternatives, in which the well location is examined and alternatives are examined.”
This examination of alternatives is carried out as part of the procedure both by the official expert, ie the Rosenheim Water Management Office, and from a legal perspective by the Lower Water Rights Authority at the district office.
Emergency alliances, difficult search: communities depend on each other
Finding water is often not that easy.
In the past, the community of Aßling had to drill a whole series of boreholes before a supply was finally found.
Frauenneuharting is fully supplied by the Grafingers.
In the event of an accident, two municipalities would be affected.
The city of Ebersberg, with which there is a newly created emergency network, is also affected by Grafinger's measures to convert its own water supply.
“If something goes wrong for us, we absolutely need the Ebersbergers,” said Niedermaier in the building committee.
For safety reasons, the district town will “plan its planned measures on the extraction network for the period after the Öxing water extraction system has been renewed.
“In addition, supply support is being prepared by the other network partner, the municipality of Aßling,” the Grafinger building committee was informed.
(By the way: Everything from the region is now also available in our regular Ebersberg newsletter.)
The Grafinger measures cannot be postponed because during attempts to regenerate Well III after the renovation work was completed, contamination was found that threatened to spread to the entire network.
The fountain was decommissioned.
Entries from surface water were suspected as the reason for the entry of germs.
Of course, this can be a bad thing.
The website aerzteblatt.de commemorates one of the last two major drinking water epidemics in Germany in a publication.
At that time, the community of Ismaning in the neighboring district of Munich was affected by a drinking water-related outbreak of dysentery in 1978. 2,400 people became ill.
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