First WCD Forum Meeting
25-26 March, 1999, Czech Republic

Dams and the Danube

The Prague Forum panel, March 26 1999

During the Prague Forum meeting, a two-hour plenary session was devoted to the theme Dams and the Danube: Lessons Learned in the Context of International River Basin Management. Panelists were:

• Mr. Knut Leitner, Deputy Director, Verbund/VEG (Danube Hydro Austria), Austria
• Dr. H. Bernhart, Professor, Institute for Hydraulic Structures and Agricultural Engineering, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
• Mr. Alexander Zinke, Envinronmental Specialist, Austria

Mr. Leitner Dams and the Danube: Aims, Realisation and Impacts of Danube Dam Projects.
The Danube River is the largest of central Europe. It crosses eight countries, and drains more than 800,000 sq. km. The Austrian section of the Danube is 350 km long, with a medium gradient of 44 cm/km, which explains the high energy potential of this section of the Danube River, and covers a basin of 130,000 sq. km. The exploitation of this potential really started in the late 1950s with the development of a Master Plan that identified 11 power plants to be built on the river. Today, nine of these power plants are already constructed, and the remaining two are planned for the near future. The height of these dams varies from 8.5 m to 15.3m. The existing nine dams have significantly improved navigation along the Danube and produce 12300 gigawatts/year, which represents more than 25% of Austria's electric energy consumption.

Consultation mechanisms used during the development of the most recent dam in the basin, the Freudenau project, illustrate the new societal values, and the high level of civic awareness and popular participation in decentralised decision-making processes reached by the Austrian nation. Launched under the auspices of the Municipality of Vienna in the mid-1980s, the design of the project started with a "competition" or call for ideas/submissions about the project. A lively popular participation took place: civil engineers, university experts and qualified authorities submitted 92 proposals; interested citizen groups presented 74 project papers, and more than 10,000 contributions came from the general public. A jury established for that purpose selected a limited number of projects for further elaboration. A comparative analysis of the substantive proposals concluded that a dam was the optimal solution for the identified needs. A general project and a series of subprojects were then selected. An environmental compatibility check-up was conducted leading to the approval of the project package -approval conditioned with a number of changes and environmental mitigation measures. The Municipality of Vienna then organised a referendum in May 1991 in order to ascertain popular acceptance of the project. With a turnout of about 44 percent, 72 per cent of voters supported the project. The Government's water authority granted a license the same year. After this triple approval -environmental check-up, popular support, and Government license-the construction of the Freudenau dam started in 1992 and was completed six years later.

Prof. Bernhart Dam Construction and Dam Projects on Rivers in Central Europe: Danue, Rhine.
Some years ago, a one-sided planning approach that imposed engineers's views was the dominant practice in the Rhine and Danube basins. "We don't discuss, we construct" seemed to be engineers' credo. This situation has significantly changed. Nowadays, there is an increased awareness of the influence of the river regime on the flora and fauna habitats, and hence on the ecological implications of the alteration of this regime.

A. Zinke Dams and the Danube: Lessons from the Environmental Impacts.
At 2,780 km in length, the Danube is second only to the Volga in being Europe's most important river. The entire catchment area of the Danube includes all or large parts of the territory of 13 states. The basin also touches on small tracts of the territory of four other states. Most of the Danube and its tributaries have been developed by ten thousands of dams. These dams and other river works undertaken over the last decades have significantly altered the natural flow and sedimentation regime of the Danube. In turn this has resulted in the aggravation of flood hazards, the reduction of the self-purification capacities of the river, the blocking of longitudinal and lateral migration patterns, losses of biodiversity, etc.

The Danube basin faces reduced water availability and water quality resulting from communal and industrial pollution and from competing demands (domestic, industrial and agricultural uses). Therefore, access to clean freshwater is a major issue for riparian states, especially for the 83 million people living in the basin (13 states).

The first hydro dam in the Danube Basin dates back to 1927, and was built at Vilshofen in Germany. Today the installed hydropower capacity in the basin is in the order of 29,000 MW. The upper reaches of the Danube illustrate the high density of dams in the basin: With 58 dams, there are on average a dam every 17 km in the first 1,000 km of the Danube river. Ecological problems resulting from these interventions have led since the early 1980s to a greater public opposition to the continuation of conventional river development and conflicts have arisen. Some of these conflicts --Hainsburg (1984), Gabcikovo-Nagymoros (1988)-have drawn international attention, but other less publicised conflicts and controversies have surrounded many other projects in the basin in Germany, Austria, Croatia, etc. All over the Danube basin, large dam and canalisation projects face bigger public, political and legal constraints. It is clear that the era of dam construction with engineers "taming rivers" is coming to an end on the Danube. A new era of river restoration has begun.