Fears grow that Rhine water levels could fall below critical line

German officials said water levels on the Rhine could reach extremely low levels in the next few days – making it increasingly difficult to transport goods including coal and gasoline along the river.

Weeks of dry weather have turned several major waterways in Europe into a trickle, causing headaches for German factories and power plants that depend on shipping.

“This is especially the case with the Rhine, which has a very low nautical bottleneck at Kaub but is still navigable for ships with a small draft,” said Tim Alexandrin, a spokesman for Germany’s transport ministry.

Authorities forecast water levels in Kaub to drop below 40cm by early Friday and continue to drop over the weekend.

“It’s quite dramatic, but not as dramatic as it was in 2018,” said Christian Lorenz, a spokesman for German logistics company HGK.

Due to a lack of water vessels to carry salt along the river from Heilbronn to Cologne, a water vessel that normally carries 2,200 metric tons of cargo can currently only carry about 600 tons, he said.

“Of course we hope that shipping doesn’t stop, but we saw in 2018 that when the water levels were very low, there was suddenly no more fuel at the filling stations because the ships couldn’t get through,” Mr Lorenz said.

Meanwhile, HGK and other shipping lines are preparing for a “new normal” in which droughts are getting worse from the Swiss Alps to the banks of the Rhine as global warming makes them worse. Getting worse, low water levels like this year will become more common. North Sea.

“There is no denying climate change and the industry is adapting to it,” Mr Lorenz said.

All the new ships ordered by the company are built to fit them into the low waters of the Rhine, he said.