Brandenburg politicians are pushing for clarification and the consequences of the massive fish deaths on the Oder, in which around 200 tons of fish carcasses have now been collected in Germany and Poland. “Whether fishermen, anglers or other river riparians: We demand a publicly accessible Oder register in which all discharge permits and discharges can be traced,” said Gernot Schmidt, SPD district administrator of the Märkisch-Oderland district, which is affected with its 80-kilometer stretch of river , on Tuesday of this newspaper.
“So far, brickwork has been done. But transparency is necessary.” You have to know who discharges what and how much, and what that means, for example, at low tide. “The federal government, Poland and Brandenburg must set up such an Oder cadastre as soon as possible.”
Schmidt was one of the experts and those responsible who answered questions about the fish kill at a special session of the environmental committee in the state parliament on Tuesday – immediately after the end of the parliamentary summer break. He is otherwise considered a critic of Environment Minister Axel Vogel (Greens) and the State Environment Agency in the conflict over beavers and wolves.
But this time there was praise from Schmidt. In connection with the fish kill, he had “no criticism of the state level,” said Schmidt. The demand for such a register has now received broad support from politicians and from the anglers’ and fisheries’ associations. Committee head Wolfgang Roick, environmental policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, also spoke out in favor of it.
Brandenburg’s Environment Minister Vogel also spoke in the state parliament. The fish kills are “on a gigantic scale,” he said. In Brandenburg alone, more than 113 tons of carcasses have now been collected, which are disposed of as special waste in waste incineration plants, for example in the PCK refinery in Schwedt.
“In relation to that, we have twelve family fishing businesses in the Brandenburg section of the Oder, which process a ton of fish per week,” said Vogel. “This means that we have already had to dispose of two annual quantities of fish that are normally processed as hazardous waste”. That hurts.
According to Uwe Brämick from the Institute for Inland Fisheries, the Oder in Brandenburg has lost an estimated half of its fish stocks as a result of the fish die-off. “Recovery cannot happen in a few weeks and months,” said Brämick. “The consequences will be felt for several years.”
According to Vogel, it is now clear that there was a fish kill on July 28 near Wroclaw in Poland, about which Poland, contrary to the international warning and alarm plan for the Oder, did not provide information. An event of international importance was classified as a “local event” there, and those responsible lost their posts there because of the misjudgment.
Vogel emphasized that the international warning and alarm plan for the Oder “urgently needs to be revised”. So far, higher salt loads have not had to be reported. “I don’t want to give anyone the buck,” Vogel said. Poland’s Environment Minister Anna Moskwa accused the German side of spreading fake news.
Nevertheless, it is now certain that unusually high salt loads from Poland, probably originating from an open retention basin, and the spread of toxic substances through an algal bloom, the so-called golden alga, have promoted the death of fish. The exact origin of the salt is not known, said Vogel. “We know it comes from Poland.”
He also pointed out the current connection to the high water temperatures and low water levels on the Oder and to the already high levels of pollution in the river. “The algal toxin is the cause that matches all findings,” said Christian Wolter from the Leibniz Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB).
Wolter explained that the conditions that promote algae persist. “It can happen again.” He therefore calls for more far-reaching consequences: “We have to make the river more resilient to the consequences of climate change.”
This also includes designating natural flood areas and increasing the flow rate, which also slows down algae growth. “Deepening the Oder is diametrically opposed to that,” said Wolter, referring to Poland’s planned expansion of the Oder. Every alga can double in size in one day, added his IGB colleague Jan Köhler. It’s about exponential growth.
The effects on the Lower Oder Valley National Park, the only floodplain national park in Germany, are particularly serious. Its boss Dirk Treichel also reported masses of dead mussels and snails. Carcasses of 30 to 40-year-old catfish were also collected, said Treichel. “It brings tears to your eyes.”
The resettlement project for sturgeons in the Oder also suffered a “severe setback”. With a view to the debate about the expansion of the waterway, Treichel also urged that the Oder be considered and strengthened as an overall ecosystem.
