The outrage over the destruction of the strictly protected Rappenalpbach near Oberstdorf has not yet subsided, when conservationists fear a new outrage in the mountain valley in the Allgäu Alps. As now became known on the sidelines of a municipal council meeting in Oberstdorf, a private investor wants to resume plans for the construction of a small hydroelectric power station on the Rappenalpbach. The facility would be in the middle of a nature reserve.
At the Bund Naturschutz (BN) they are appalled. “It must now only be about renaturing the Rappenalpbach as well as possible,” says BN boss Richard Mergner. Environment Minister Thorsten Faithr and the Oberallgäu District Administrator Indra Baier-Müller (both Free Voters) should “immediately put a stop to the project”. Hydroelectric power plants in nature reserves contradict an ecological energy transition.
The plans themselves are not new, they date from around 2007. The hydroelectric power station should deliver 7.3 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. This corresponds to the electricity consumption of around 2,300 households. The facility was to be built on the lower reaches of the Rappenalpbach, where it becomes the Stillach. The water for the turbine was to be diverted from the Rappenalpbach and flow from there via a 1.4-kilometer pipeline to the turbine house, where it was to be fed back into the Stillach.
At first even the municipality of Oberstdorf wanted to get involved in the project. But even then there was massive resistance. Because with such a power plant, a large part of the water would be withdrawn from the Rappenalpbach and the Stillach. Only a trickle would have remained of the ecologically highly valuable and strictly protected torrents. The protests were so massive that the Oberstdorf municipal council withdrew its intention to participate and rejected the project in 2009. Only the CSU stuck to their yes. In Oberstdorf, speculation is currently circulating that the investor is now reviving his plans in the hope that the expansion of renewable energies will be given priority over nature conservation in the future.
Dredged, straightened and channeled
The destruction of the Rappenalpbach in its upper reaches is considered the worst natural crime in Bavaria for years. There, in autumn, Obertdorfer Alpbauern dredged, straightened and channeled the mountain stream over a length of 1.6 kilometers to a depth of two and a half meters – in order to repair damage caused by a flood in August 2022, as they say. In some sections, the workers even pushed through the bottom of the stream with their heavy equipment, so that the Rappenalpbach dried up there.
An area of nine hectares is affected. That’s about the size of twelve soccer fields. The former, unique variety of plants and animals on it has been completely lost. The Rappenalptal and the Rappenalpbach are among the natural jewels of Bavaria. They are strictly protected under German and European law. Before it was destroyed, the Rappenalpbach was one of only two surface water bodies in Bavaria that experts certified as being in “very good ecological condition”. Environment Minister Glauber has promised to restore it if possible.