Water in the floodplain (June 1st, 2010)

“Floods are part of a flood­plain nation­al park, so the cur­rent deci­sion to flood the pold­ers was the right one, despite the loss­es for local agri­cul­ture. But it is only the sec­ond best solution.

Much bet­ter than the tor­rent-like flood­ing of the pold­ers would be a gen­tle flood­ing of the flood­plain, which could be reached eas­i­ly and cheap­ly if the inlet and out­let struc­tures, for exam­ple in the Fid­di­chow­er pold­er (10), remained open all year round, as was the case with the Bran­den­burg water study Envi­ron­ment Min­istry also sug­gests. Then many ani­mals of the pold­er who can­not fly and swim would have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to grad­u­al­ly with­draw and would not have to die mis­er­ably, com­plete­ly sur­prised by the rapid­ly ris­ing tide. Not only small game, even deer and wild boar, as can cur­rent­ly be observed, are vic­tims of the tor­rent-like floods. It does­n’t have to be, it’s une­co­log­i­cal and also a vio­la­tion of ani­mal welfare.

Inci­den­tal­ly, the farm­ers work­ing in the Fid­di­chow Pold­er (10) have giv­en their writ­ten con­sent that the cost­ly and ener­­gy-inten­­sive pump­ing oper­a­tion can be dis­con­tin­ued and that the inlet and out­let struc­tures can remain open all year round. They were oth­er­wise held harm­less for this. This writ­ten con­sent of the farm­ers is delib­er­ate­ly ignored by the nation­al park admin­is­tra­tion because it did not “grow on their dung”, but was reached by the asso­ci­a­tion, which the admin­is­tra­tion only per­ceives as annoy­ing com­pe­ti­tion. This basi­cal­ly sil­ly rival­ry has to stop!

The cur­rent flood of the cen­tu­ry is a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to think about an eco­log­i­cal flood régime of the future and to make sen­si­ble and sus­tain­able decisions. ”

Thomas Berg
CEO