Dry communities

Eco-hardship message was just a “slap in the face”

130 liters of water - that's how much water is consumed daily and per capita in households.

(Bild: dpa-Zentralbild/Jens Büttner)

471 red-white-red municipalities are threatened with water shortages by the year 205 - more than half of the affected locations are in Lower Austria. However, the local energy supplier EVN is now countering this Greenpeace warning that 288 towns between Enns and Leitha could soon "dry up".

The new study by the rainbow campaigners hit the water like a "bomb", claiming that large areas of Lower Austria would plunge into a bottomless pit of drinking water by 2050. Exactly 288 municipalities in the vast state are at high risk of no longer having sufficient moisture reserves at that time, because the climate crisis will intensify and become more arid.

Two thirds do not rely on groundwater
For EVN, however, the study is - in the truest sense of the word - just a slap in the face. The crystal-clear counter to this bad news is expressed in figures: 62 percent of the locations declared a Sahel zone by Greenpeace are connected to the 1700-kilometre-long EVN water network. The regional supplier planned ahead against global warming years ago with these pipelines. "This network can cushion periods of drought. There are enough reserves from 100 wells to distribute the precious water," says EVN spokesman Stefan Zach.