COLOGNE, Germany, 8 September 2003 — The river Rhine, Europe’s busiest waterway and one of its longest, is thirsty.
The 1,320 km (820 mile)-long river, famous for its medieval castles and crucial to European transport, is at record low levels after a heat wave, hurting firms that rely on the trade artery.
“It is very, very, very low,” said 64-year-old pensioner Willy Pilgram, whose apartment building in Cologne overlooks the river.
Piles of dry rocks and stones, littered with beer cans, plastic bottles and other garbage are heaped up along one bank of the Rhine, while a patch of sand on the other side stretches along like a beach where water normally laps at a stone wall.
“Everyone is saying that they haven’t seen it so low in ages,” said Cologne resident Melanie Maureder, 30. “Normally you don’t see the rocks down here.”
Certain sections of the Rhine are at their lowest point in more than 100 years, according to the German inland waterways navigation authority WSA.
As a result, cruise operators and shipping companies, which move 200 million tons of freight in the German section of the river alone, are seeing sales drop as barges are unable to fill to capacity. Passenger ships are carrying fewer tourists because they cannot reach the shore to pick them up.
The rain is coming, though only in showers, and after months of often deadly heat across Europe, the parched river is only partially refilling.
But the damage from the low water levels is not over and the outlook is far from good. “It would have to rain twice a week continuously for the water level to slowly rise again,” said Gerd Franke, head of the Cologne water and shipping authority.
Even worse, September is a traditionally dry month, he said.
“We have not yet made it through the critical period.”
The Rhine, which flows through Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, is Europe’s busiest inland waterway and freighters that transport oil, gas and foodstuffs have felt the pain of low water levels especially keenly.
“The Rhine is the main artery of European inland navigation,” said Ervin Spitzer, deputy business manager of German inland shipping organization BDB.
He said the low water meant barges were traveling less than half full and forcing companies to use four or five boats where one would normally have sufficed.
Shipping firms have charged a low-water supplement to help offset the sales decline, Spitzer said. The charge could increase the risk of losing business to rail and road transport firms, though Spitzer said figures were not available to show how much that had occurred. In the Cologne area, barges move slowly down the middle of the river, while on the shore, ramps to passenger boats angle sharply downward to reach their respective ships.
Norbert Schmitz, the head of cruise ship operator Koeln-Duesseldorfer Deutsche Rheinschiffahrt AG, said the shallow water had forced it to close nine locations because the ships could not dock.
Two have been reopened but sales in August were down 15 percent as a result of the closures, he said.
Some car ferries have also stopped their services because they could not reach the ramps.
The conditions have forced Rhine traffic to move slower, causing delays and sometimes straining engines. “When the water is high the ship runs along smoothly,” said Anton Ingen, 60, the captain of the 184-passenger ship Statendam.
But low water levels have caused his boat to vibrate more, requiring an extra person in the kitchen to hold on to the pots.
The ship, which sometimes sails from Arnhem in the Netherlands to the Swiss city of Basel, has had to alter its routes.
“The last time we did not go all the way to Basel,” said Gerhard von Denberg, the ship’s chief cook. “The risk was too big that we would get stuck.”
However, despite the damaging effect of the low Rhine on inland navigation, economists said it would not have a major effect on Germany’s already stagnant economy.
“For the economy in (the state of) North Rhine-Westphalia or in Germany, it’s not a problem,” said WestLB economist Holger Sandte.
Economist Ulrike Kastens said the inland navigation sector made up only 0.2 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product.
“For the full economy, it’s a non-event,” she said.
Nonetheless, those affected by the low levels are hoping the waterway will fill up again soon, not least to cover up some of the rubbish the lower riverbanks have revealed: beer cans, furniture, bikes and the mangled remains of old cars.
