In the ongoing dispute over the drinking water catchment of the Munich public utility company in the Mangfall Valley, the affected municipalities and landowners in the Miesbach district are demanding a completely new approval procedure and are now relying on their own legal opinion. The municipal utilities pump around 80 percent of Munich’s drinking water from the Mangfalltal and still refer to the water law of 1852. The city of Miesbach, some surrounding communities and two farms with pastures in the water protection area, however, dispute the validity of these old rights. On Friday in Miesbach they presented an expert opinion by environmental lawyer Martin Kment.
The conflict between the municipal utilities, the authorities and the farmers and municipalities in the district of Miesbach has been smoldering for many decades. Some want to use power to ensure the supply of one and a half million people. The others emphasize in unison that nobody wants to turn off the water for Munich. At the same time, they would like to have to live with significantly fewer restrictions, for example on agriculture, the construction of settlements and the designation of commercial areas.
For this reason, the Miesbach district office has been delaying a long overdue procedure to expand the water protection area in the Mangfalltal for decades. After the Green District Administrator Wolfgang Rzehak, who was elected to office in 2014, had taken up the matter again under pressure from the Ministry of the Environment, a hearing with those affected escalated completely in 2018 and the process sank into chaos. Rzehak’s successor, Olaf von Löwis (CSU), who was elected in 2020, wants to start practically from scratch – without any previous rights, which the public utility company believes are “unrestricted, irrevocable and indefinite”.
The expert lives in Munich himself and was surprised by the result of his analysis
If they are not, is the essence of the report that Martin Kment prepared for the Miesbach side. Kment is a professor of environmental law at the University of Augsburg and lives in Munich himself. Kment said on Friday that he could hardly have imagined that the water he drinks every day at home could come from an unauthorized subsidy. And yet no such approval was ever given.
The Stadtwerke refer to a decision of the Royal Administrative Court from 1910, according to which a permit is not necessary for systems that already existed in 1907 or were already planned. However, this decision was later misinterpreted with regard to some unfulfilled requirements, criticizes Kment. Furthermore, in 1924 the Stadtwerke had a connecting tunnel built, thereby increasing the capacity. That also made the alleged grandfathering invalid.
The Miesbach district office does not need to convince Kment with the report. As early as 2022, the authority asked the municipal utilities to reapply for the permit so that a decision could be made according to current law. The Munich public utilities are complaining about this step before the administrative court. It is unclear when negotiations will take place.