Book recommendation
150 years of water protection in Germany
Development, results and findings
To the contents
The recommended book provides a historical overview of how the resource water has been managed, beginning in ancient Rome through the Middle Ages to the present. The book's title refers to the founding of the German Reich in 1871. From that point on, efforts to protect water bodies through water law regulations and their implementation in Germany are examined in particular.
Water protection is significantly influenced by the prevailing social framework conditions. These can be divided over the 150 years considered as follows:
- 1871 to 1918 (period from the founding of the German Reich to the end of World War I)
- 1918 to 1933 (period from 1918 to the end of the Weimar Republic)
- 1933 to 1945 (period from 1933 until the end of World War II)
- 1945 to 1990 (period from 1945 to German reunification)
- 1990 to the present (period after German reunification to today)
The first phase was characterised by multifaceted, intensive work to establish the first state water laws. During the Weimar Republic the first functioning municipal sewage treatment plant based on the activated sludge process (in Essen) and the first plants for the purification of industrial wastewater (phenol removal from coking plant effluents) were built. In the subsequent "Third Reich" further efforts, such as the development of a Reich Water Act, fell victim to the Nazi war policy. After World War II, political paths diverged in East and West Germany. Although the old Federal Republic and the former GDR were essentially faced with the same water management problems, that division also applied to approaches and practical measures in water protection. By 1990 it had become clear that the West German approach was clearly the better one. After German reunification, the good experiences of the old federal states were therefore implemented very quickly in the new states as well.
Because it is always important to draw lessons from history, the book juxtaposes the differing legal regulations for water protection and their enforcement in East and West. For example, the old Federal Republic relied on the emissions principle to reduce wastewater loads in water bodies. Under this principle the same requirements apply to all dischargers, regardless of the pre-existing pollution level of the water body affected by the emission. The former GDR, by contrast, relied on the immissions principle. Here the permissible emission of each polluter is determined by how much wastewater load the water body can still accept without disturbing the ecological balance or impairing existing or intended uses. That may not sound unreasonable at first, but in the GDR shortage economy it led to the "free services of nature" in the form of the self‑purification capacity of water bodies being mercilessly overburdened.
With a view to avoiding such mistakes in the future, several water pollution accidents, such as the Sandoz incident or the Zschopau accident, are also analysed. Conclusions and recommended actions form the conclusion of the book.