The indignation about the immensely increased water charges in Icking is still huge. The special session on Monday – with around 15 listeners – was intended to smooth the waves and explore possible scope for action. Above all, however, it showed one thing: the community has not yet understood how to take its citizens with it on the rocky road to pipeline rehabilitation. Mayor Verena Reithmann (UBI) admitted omissions. “We should have been more active,” she admitted, “and called out more clearly, dear people, the water is getting more expensive.”
High additional payments that seemed to come out of the blue because of a retrospective decision. Fees that almost tripled in some cases. Dairy farmers who suddenly found themselves faced with double the annual bills of 10,000 euros and feared for their livelihoods. A district that feels unfairly treated – all of this had sparked the anger of the citizens. The municipal council also felt taken by surprise in February, although it had unanimously approved the increases months earlier.
So far, very few citizens have probably understood that the municipality has not had a water permit for a long time and that the authorities are therefore putting pressure on them to finally tackle the matter. The refurbishment is expensive for the consumer because it is legal that the costs have to be allocated directly in a fixed period of time and cannot be written off over the longer term. Harald Kienlein, who was invited as an expert from the Kienlein engineering office, tried to work out the groundbreaking importance of the measure here. Icking is by no means a special case with its old network and the water price due to renovation. “This will affect other communities as well, the price of water will rise everywhere in the medium term.” Kienlein gave little hope that the fees would fall again after four years. “Renovating a 40-kilometer pipeline network costs up to 40 million euros, so you have to invest and distribute 400,000 euros a year.”
Reithmann had summarized the citizens’ input into topic blocks and had them answered by the experts. Ingrid Hannemann from the Munich office Kubus Kommunalberatung was invited. The fees lawyer left no doubt that everything was done correctly when it came to price calculations and that consumers would have to pay. But the municipality also has to hold its nose because the production fee of 4.61 euros for the first connection has not been raised for 50 years and is far too cheap. “They have a huge financing hole,” explained Hannemann. “These are legacy issues that can no longer be made up for.”
Water warden Stephan Burlein tests the water quality
(Photo: Hartmut Pöstges)
Water warden Stephan Burlein spoke of a water loss due to burst pipes of up to 40 percent in recent years and listed the focal points: above all Eichendorffweg, Fuchsbichl, Spatzenloh, Almweg and the lower Kapellenweg. “The Water Management Agency is no longer willing to tolerate that.” That’s why the municipality decided in 2020 to start the renovation immediately, explained Reithmann, because having burst pipes patched up at high cost is the most pointless measure. “We didn’t want to let the thread with the most urgent things break,” she justified the retrospective levying of fees to 3.88 euros per cubic meter.
The villagers will also have to live with that, who have already paid significantly more (1.89 instead of 1.43 euros in Icking) and are now annoyed because they have to help finance the broken pipes in Icking. “But Dorfen can’t make it as an independent unit because it’s too small,” explained Reithmann.
For the farmers groaning under the new water price, whose milk cows drink up to 150 liters per day, a solution is emerging: because the principle of equality means that nothing can be done about the fees, the additional burden on farmers is to be compensated for with a newly introduced premium for the Rainwater management to be collected. In plain language, this means that the rainwater should be collected, reused and paid for according to volume. The environmental committee should create a solution with a points system as quickly as possible. “The municipality must act so that its seven farmers can live on,” Uschi Loth (PWG) had demanded. Also not off the table yet is an increase in the basic fee, which is decoupled from consumption, in order to relieve the farmers somewhat. But this requires new decisions. What is to be founded independently of this is a working group that thinks into the future and works on an infrastructure concept for water rehabilitation that is eligible for subsidies.