"The larger the ship, the less it can carry - relatively speaking," said Leny van Toorenburg, the head of nautical technical affairs for Dutch shipping industry group KBN, calculating the impact of a 47-centimeter water level. Instead, shippers are having to constantly calculate the weight they can shift based on the low water readings at gauges such as Kaub. “Accordingly, the economic efficiency decreases and switches to road or rail.”Īs part of efforts to tackle low water, the German government wants to remove rocks and gravel from some chokepoints, including Kaub, but this poses environmental problems and would require regular maintenance. “When the water levels are low, it is usually not possible to load as much on the ships as usual,” said Dominik Rösch from Germany's Federal Institute of Hydrology. Standing beside the Kaub gauge on Friday - the display dipping under 55 centimeters on the tower following a day of sweltering temperatures - POLITICO could already see rocks jutting up through the water as low-draft barges drifted by. Some 80 percent of all waterborne freight within Germany - through which the Elbe, Ruhr and Danube also flow - is carried on the Rhine.īut once water levels decline below 40 centimeters at Kaub, shipping commodities becomes uneconomical. The Lorelei rock, just a few kilometers downstream from Kaub, is where, so the legend goes, a maiden flung herself into the water and transformed into a wailing siren.īut beyond the mystique, holidaymakers and castles studding the forested valley sides, the river is also a critical economic artery.Įvery year, upwards of 300 million tons of goods are shipped along the Rhine between Basel, where Switzerland, Germany and France meet, and the North Sea. Snaking its way through Europe, the Rhine is the stuff of mythology in Germany, as wrapped up in the national identity as sausages and crystal clear beer. That's at least two months before the Rhine usually hits its lowest level. “At the Dutch-German border, it can already be classified as a ‘rare’ event that can be expected every 10 years,” said Heintz of the situation further downstream. An inland vessel navigates on the Rhine as people stand on the shore by a partially dried-up river bed in Duesseldorf, western Germany, on J| Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty ImagesĪlong the Upper Rhine until Mannheim, the water level is so low that it's classified as an event seen once every two to five years statistically, but from Mannheim to Duisburg, the stretch including both Kaub and Koblenz, the water is already at a depth typically only seen once every five to 10 years. This year is shaping up to be another record breaker. Low rainfall and melting mountain glaciers are two reasons for the extremes. The record low in 2018 was followed up by unusually high water levels last summer, which forced shipping to stop temporarily in certain areas. Typically, Heintz said, the Rhine reaches its highest water levels in the spring and early summer and its lowest point in the autumn, but this pattern is changing fast. In 2020, researchers from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy said that a month of low water on the Rhine would shave about 1 percent off of German industrial output. Energy companies are already warning of reduced output at coal-fired power plants due to problems transporting coal along the river. But that's costly and inefficient since it takes hundreds of trucks or train cars to handle cargoes that can be loaded onto a single barge.Īt a time of high inflation, a global supply-chain crunch and a looming gas crisis, low Rhine levels are another headache for Germany Inc. The water was so low then that the river was closed to ship traffic for weeks, forcing companies to switch their freight to railways and roads. Such downpours aren't forecasted for the next two weeks, and levels at the Kaub chokepoint are already lower than they were at the same point in 2018 ahead of that October’s historic low of 25 centimeters. Over coffee on the first floor of the ICPR's office overlooking the Rhine in Koblenz, just meters from where it meets the Moselle, Heintz said it would now take prolonged, torrential rainfall to meaningfully increase the depth. “If it stays dry then we are going to have a big problem,” said Marc Daniel Heintz, the head of the secretariat at the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR), an organization through which countries coordinate efforts to cut pollution.
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