Politics supposedly means drilling thick boards. The sociologist Max Weber is said to have said this, although he originally described politics as “strong, slow drilling of hard boards”. But regardless of whether the board is thick or hard and how this all relates to the constant dripping and the stone: sometimes the board is drilled less hard and therefore slower. This is what politicians did with the protected area for the drinking water of one and a half million Munich residents in the Mangfalltal and was rewarded with great peace in the Miesbach district. But now all of a sudden it’s all taking far too long for the people of Miesbach.
According to the authorities, the expansion of the protected area is 60 years overdue. They are becoming more and more impatient, so that people in Miesbach now fear that the government of Upper Bavaria could take the process away from the district office and complete it themselves. The Miesbachers had tried for a long time to delay the matter as best they could, but they had gotten themselves into trouble with an expert report.
For a long time, only the town of Miesbach was really affected because of its commercial area and three farms whose cows graze in the Mangfalltal just above the groundwater. But the district then ordered this report, and it showed, as requested, that the metabolic cows should not be the problem – but the sewage treatment plants for the Schlierach Valley near Miesbach and the Tegernsee Valley near Gmund should be.
This has significantly expanded the circle of those affected. The two wastewater associations suddenly found themselves threatened with high investment requirements in the event of an expansion of the protected area. They have now joined a new petition, which was handed over on Tuesday to state parliament president Ilse Aigner as Miesbach constituency representative and to her CSU party friend Alexander Flierl as chairman of the environmental committee. Accordingly, someone on the state side should finally take note of another report, according to which the Munich municipal utilities have no old rights to the water from the Mangfalltal, which they always insist on. The municipal utilities continue to insist on this. The committee will take care of it, says Flierl. In the meantime, a lot of water will continue to flow down the Mangfall. Except that now everyone is getting impatient.