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Baden-Württemberg and Thurgau already get a lot of drinking water from Lake Constance. Now Bavaria could come along.
Lake Constance is a bathing resort, local recreation area, tourism magnet and excursion destination. And above all: a supplier of drinking water. Four million people in Baden-Württemberg, 40 percent of the Thurgau population and the entire city of St. Gallen get their drinking water from Lake Constance.
So far, the German state of Bavaria has only received a small amount of drinking water from the lake. This could change soon. A study on long-distance water pipes from Lake Constance to northern Bavaria is currently being carried out. Bavaria has only a few kilometers of shore on Lake Constance, the most famous place is Lindau. Most of the drinking water in Bavaria today comes from groundwater.
Places like Franconia or Lower Bavaria – i.e. areas that are rather far away from Lake Constance – have to struggle with water shortages as the drought increases. According to the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment, the drinking water supply is to be secured with a network of several hundred kilometers of new long-distance water pipes.
Only about half is pumped out
However, it is not the case that the 13 million inhabitants of the federal state are now “stealing” the drinking water from those bordering on eastern Switzerland. Heinz Ehmann, Head of Water Quality and Use at the Thurgau Office for the Environment, says: “We assume that Bavaria has found that there is too little water in certain places. Such peaks could be covered with long-distance lines.”
On average, 5.4 cubic meters of water are pumped out of Lake Constance per second. According to an agreement between Austria, Germany and Switzerland, 10 cubic meters would be permitted. So currently only about half of the actually approved amount of water is excluded.
Lake loses more through evaporation
The representative of the state of Baden-Württemberg, Sarah Kreidler from Lake Constance Water Supply, says: “Even if another state like Bavaria were to take water from Lake Constance, even if this happened to the same extent as in Baden-Württemberg, Lake Constance could very likely handle it well.”
We have enough drinking water now and in the future.
Only just 1 to 2 percent of the water supplied annually is taken from Lake Constance as drinking water. Evaporation from the sun, for example, accounts for a larger proportion of water loss. Plus: A large part of the water flows back into Lake Constance after it has been clarified. Heinz Ehmann from the Thurgau Canton’s Office for the Environment says: “If we look at the size of Lake Constance, we will definitely have enough drinking water now and in the future.”