More than two decades after deciding to build seven large flood polders to protect against extreme flooding, Bavaria’s state government has only implemented two of these projects. But now Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber (Free Voters) wants to speed things up. Glauber’s party leader and Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger, however, stressed that polders on the Danube had not helped in the current flood crisis. Regarding the current status of the polder program, the Environment Ministry said: “The Weidachwiesen polder is in operation and is currently being used. The Riedensheim polder is ready for use.”
The program for nine controlled flood polders along the Danube, which was launched in 2021, will be implemented, Glauber announced on Wednesday in Munich. “For extreme floods, Bavaria is relying on a flood polder chain along the Danube. Since I took office in 2018, I have been promoting the planned flood polder chain,” said Glauber – and emphasized: “The flood polder program is being implemented.” Flood polders can be used to “pull the emergency brake in a targeted manner” in the event of a catastrophic flood.
Flood polders are areas that are demarcated by dikes and can be flooded in the event of extreme flooding. Currently, the head of the Free Voters, Hubert Aiwanger, is particularly under criticism, as he previously fought against “megalomaniac flood polders” in addition to “monster routes”. In their first coalition agreement in 2018, the CSU and Free Voters therefore deleted the planned large Danube polders Bertoldsheim and Eltheim/Wörthhof, which are being fought against by many local citizens. Aiwanger, Free Voters and the state government as a whole are therefore faced with the accusation of having cut back on flood protection. In 2021, the CSU/FW coalition reversed this and expanded the polder plans to nine locations.
On Wednesday, Aiwanger said that the polders had been of no use in the current flood crisis. If there were more polders on the Danube, they probably wouldn’t have been used at all, he told the BR24 radio program. The main damage was to smaller rivers upstream of the Danube, not to the Danube itself: “The damage occurred before it flowed into the Danube.” The operational Riedensheim polder was not needed at all at the moment.
Glauber then explained: The controlled flood polders were designed for a disaster scenario that has not yet been reached in the current situation on the Danube. The Riedensheim flood polder was put on standby during the flood, but was not flooded in the current situation.
Both the Free Voters and Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) have declared the accusations that Bavaria is doing too little in terms of flood protection to be false news. “Since 2001, we have invested four billion euros, by 2030 a further two billion will be invested in flood protection, and we spend one billion annually on climate protection,” said Söder on Tuesday after the cabinet meeting.
The year 2001 mentioned by Söder refers to the “Flood Action Program 2020”, announced by the then Environment Minister Werner Schnappauf (CSU) just over 23 years ago: on May 8, 2001. The reason was the great Whitsun flood in 1999. In fact, the state government has since invested almost twice as much money in flood protection than the almost 2.3 billion euros announced at the time. With this large amount of money, flood protection was improved in many municipalities, dikes were moved back, equipment was purchased for the fire brigade, the dam of the Sylvenstein reservoir was raised on the upper reaches of the Isar to protect Bad Tölz, Munich, Freising and other cities from flooding, and much more.
But the construction of the flood polders is stalling – and it is precisely these polders that are supposed to protect Bavaria from the feared extreme flood disaster on the Danube. The reason for the delays is the vehement resistance on the ground. “Governing is no fun and that is why you have to put in the necessary effort,” said Söder. Glauber emphasized: “I am counting on realizing the respective locations together with those involved in the regions.”
The risk of such extreme flooding has clearly increased over the past two decades. The reinsurer Munich Re documents natural disasters around the world, and it shows that both the frequency and intensity of major floods are increasing. “The safety of 120,000 people along the Danube and a damage volume of over nine billion euros are at stake,” says Environment Minister and polder advocate Glauber. The nine billion is a calculation from 2018 for the maximum damage event.
The Danube has largely lost its former natural floodplain
And the danger on the Danube is growing for a completely different reason: more and more people are living near the river. Between 1994 and 2014 alone, the population there grew by almost 10 percent, and further growth is expected by 2034, as the State Office for the Environment noted in its polder report. Many municipalities along the Danube and its tributaries have designated building areas in flood-prone areas for decades. Conservationists and insurance companies agree on this point: Settling in flood zones is pointless, and the result is immense costs as well as human suffering if flooding does occur one day. The General Association of the German Insurance Industry (GDV) is calling for a Germany-wide building ban in such areas. Söder rejects this.
The Danube has largely lost its former natural floodplain since the 19th century. “On the Danube, between Neu-Ulm and Straubing alone, more than 300 million cubic meters of retention space have been lost in the last two centuries,” says the almost six-year-old paper. The experts from the environmental agency pointed out that – unlike in Bavaria – there were already numerous polders on the Rhine and Elbe at that time. Conclusion: “It therefore makes sense to implement the flood polder program here as soon as possible.”
However, the missed 2020 polder target is only one of the projects that the state government – the CSU, which until 2018 still had no Free Voters – has set dates for and has not achieved. Barrier-free Bavaria was promised for 2023, and debt-free Bavaria by 2030. The latter was suspended years ago. The construction of 10,000 apartments by 2025, as promised by Söder, is still in sight, but only a small part of this has been built so far. Bavaria’s climate neutrality by 2040 is also promised. Experts believe that the federal government’s target of 2045 is extremely difficult to achieve.