The low point of the project had already been reached before the Main-Danube Canal was opened. Around noon on March 26, 1979, pools of water formed at the sewer construction site in the Franconian town of Katzwang. A little later, the dam of the section that had been flooded as a test broke over a length of ten meters. A 12-year-old died in the water and eight people were injured. 120 houses were damaged in the disaster, 14 destroyed, the total damage amounted to 21 million DM.
Even though the building seemed to be under an unlucky star right from the start, the political promises sounded all the more hymn-like. Franz Josef Strauss announced in 1986 that the construction of the century would one day have the same importance as the Panama and Suez Canals. After all, it can already be read in Goethe that one of the great achievements of mankind will be the connection from the North Atlantic to the Black Sea. And that’s not all: the canal, he predicted, would make the Rhine ports more important, so that the North Sea ports on the Elbe and Weser would have to work hard to remain competitive.
human achievement? 30 years after the opening of the canal, even ostrich admirers shouldn’t expect such praise, the ever-declining freight numbers are too sobering for that. Even where the channel tends to be clearly beneficial, the sober tone prevails. The spokesman for the Bayernhafen operating company, Daniel Brandt, put it most succinctly: “The canal is there – period.” The fact that economic forecasts were not achieved is certainly also due to the reality of these forecasts. If used correctly, shipping could make an eminent contribution to the turnaround in transport – and is already doing so. Especially since Bayernhafen creates and secures jobs for more than 40,000 people. For Brandt, “a look into the future makes more sense than using historical data”.
From the point of view of the Federal Nature Conservation Agency (BN), on the other hand, the waterway is “exemplary for a completely nonsensical and nature-destroying prestige project”. The BN honorary chairman, Hubert Weiger, recently spoke of “an ecological-economic disaster” at a site visit. Especially in the Altmühltal, the wounds that the canal inflicted on an old cultural landscape have not healed. At most scarred.
The landscape there also glows green in summer. But the Altmühl and the Sulz are no longer meandering rivers, but a chain of reservoirs. The consequences for the formerly rich flora and fauna are catastrophic. The Ottmaringer valley, for example, which the canal cuts through, with its wet meadows is one of the ecologically most valuable areas of the southern Franconian Jura – with short-eared owls, snipes and other rare bird species. The bogs and wet meadows are all broken. Elsewhere, too, conservationists are complaining about heavy losses. Common toad and water shrew – once widespread in the region – are missing in many places. Reed Bunting, Marsh Warbler or Whinchat have become rare. All this despite the fact that Rhein-Main-Donau AG, as a developer, pumped many millions of euros into ecological compensation measures at the time.
For Nuremberg’s economics officer Michael Fraas (CSU), the canal – the picture shows a lock in the Altmühltal section – “a complete success”: Nuremberg, for example, became a coveted river cruise destination through him – and Bavaria got a “gateway to the world”.
(Photo: dpa/SZ Photo)
From BN’s point of view, the damage is also so serious because the economic expectations of the canal have not been met in the slightest. Weiger recalls forecasts from the opening year 1992. According to this, 18 million tons of goods should have been transported on the canal every year by 2002. Not only was the crowd never reached. In fact, the actual amount of freight has fallen from year to year. In 2002, just 6.2 million tons of freight were transported in the section between Nuremberg and Kelheim. In 2020, the amount had halved to just 3.1 million tons.
Bayernhafen does not deny the numbers – nor that the trend continues to fall. Why it is like that? Beatrix Wegner, Head of the Office of the German Waterway and Shipping Association Rhein-Main-Donau (DWSV), cites the worldwide triumph of large containers, which the canal builders had not foreseen, as the most important reason. Container freight traffic is flourishing on the Rhine, for example, but such ships rarely find their way into the Main-Danube Canal. The low height of the canal bridges makes container freight largely unprofitable – the ships can only transport a maximum of two container layers on top of each other, which is quite different from the Rhine.
In the long term, is the new canal even threatened with the fate of the old canal: as an industrial monument for leisure activities? “Never,” says Wegner, “I firmly believe in the future of the waterway.” For her DWSV boss, Nuremberg’s economics officer Michael Fraas (CSU), the channel is even “a complete success”. For example, Nuremberg became a coveted river cruise destination thanks to him – and Bavaria got a “gateway to the world”.
Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber calls the canal “Franconia’s water management life insurance” because it supplies dry Franconia with water from southern Bavaria. The picture of the sunset on the Main-Danube Canal was taken near Hilpoltstein in 2017.
(Photo: Daniel Karmann/dpa)
Environment Minister Thorsten Faithr (FW), on the other hand, emphasizes the importance of the canal as a water transfer from the water-rich southern Bavaria to dry Franconia. “The canal is of fundamental importance for the water balance in Franconia,” he says. And not only as a water dispenser for the rivers there, but also for the groundwater and the water balance in northern Bavaria as a whole. With the help of the transition, which also includes the Franconian Lake District, more than four billion cubic meters of water have flowed north. In the wake of the climate catastrophe, this is likely to become increasingly important. Glauber even calls the canal “Franconia’s water management life insurance”.
But conservationists don’t want to acknowledge that either – even if they don’t question the water transfer itself. “But the canal shouldn’t have been built for a water transfer,” says Weiger. In his opinion, a water pipe would have done the trick, would have been much cheaper – and would have protected nature and the landscape.
And partly also the people. In any case, the search for those responsible for the Katzwang disaster has been stopped two years after the accident. The public prosecutor’s office stated that nobody was to be held personally liable. The main cause of the accident was probably the undermined pipe of a drinking water line.