Pollution Threatens Lake Constance

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30943, 27 December 1965, Page 6

Pollution Threatens Lake Constance

(N.Z. P.A -Reuter)

KONSTANZ( West Germany).

Scientists say that Lake Constance, an international tourist attraction, is dying. The lake, surrounded by mountains, orchards, and picturesque German, Austrian and Swiss villages is used in summer by innumerable pleasure steamers, yachts and water skiers.

But its waters are festering and slowly suffocating under the tons of sewage, chemicals and general filth pouring into it every day from the Rhine and the lakeside communities.

Dangerous bacteria are fattening and multiplying, and threatening tourists and local residents with typhus and dysentery. More than one tenth of its 180-square-mile surface is covered with putrescent mud and algae formations. Towns as far away as Stuttgart, which take their drinking water from the lake, are becoming seriously alarmed. The oxygen content of the water is rapidly diminishing, and experts say that once the oxygen is gone, a lake is dead for such uses as drinking water. For years, local authorities have been ordering expert reports, holding committee meetings, and staging angry debates—while local inhabitants have had to boil every drop of water they drink. CONVENTION The three lakeside countries got together in 1959 to form an international water preservation commission which worked out a convention for keeping the lake pure. But the convention consisted only of recommendations which no-one is forced to observe. None of the countries is obliged to get the consent of the others for any scheme affecting the lake. They are only required to consult. Different local authorities have different standards for lake water purity. The Germans are the strictest, the Austrians the least so, because their end is not so badly affected. Millions of West marks, francs, and schillings are currently being spent on sewage and filter plants to make the water cleaner. But the Rhine still spews nitrogen, phosphorus, and other chemicals

into the lake, and the local factories still dhmp their waste in it.

Fearing that the sources of pollution may increase still further, local authorities and citizens are opposing plans to set up new industries in the area and to make the Upper Rhine navigable, possibly bringing international shipping into the lake. They have

fought bitterly a plan by the Italian oil concern, E.N.I. to lay its Genoa-Ingolstadt pipeline along part of the lake shore, thereby exposing the water, they claim, to the danger of oil pollution in the event of a break.

They have not succeeded in getting the pipeline removed, but E.N.L has promised strict safety precautions and agreed to take all responsibility for any damage. It will also pay one third of the cost of fitting nearby sewage stations with oil-filtering equipment.