At the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, the water sys­tem, which is still essen­tial­ly func­tion­ing today, was estab­lished in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry to improve the out­flow for the Oder­bruch, which still suf­fers from wet­ness that does not run off after cul­ti­va­tion, in addi­tion to secur­ing ship­ping between Berlin and Szczecin all year round and opti­miz­ing the agri­cul­tur­al sit­u­a­tion cre­at­ed. The pre­vi­ous­ly mean­der­ing Stro­mod­er was relo­cat­ed to the east­ern edge of the val­ley, the oxbow lakes of the Oder and Welse remain­ing on the west­ern edge were con­nect­ed with a few open­ings to the Hohen­saat­en-Friedrich­sthaler water­way, which is direct­ly con­nect­ed to the West or the Baltic Sea with­out locks. Between the Hohen­saat­en-Friedrich­sthaler Wasser­straße in the west and the Stro­mod­er in the east, sev­er­al were built based on the Dutch mod­el Pold­ers. Wet pold­ers were cre­at­ed near Criewen and Schwedt, which are flood­ed in autumn after the inlet and out­let struc­tures have been opened accord­ing to the water lev­el of the Oder. In the win­ter half-year, large parts of this wet pold­er (4,720 hectares) are then under water for a long time.

In the spring, the water ini­tial­ly flows off through the out­let struc­tures accord­ing to the gra­di­ent, and final­ly the remain­ing remain­der is pumped out, which is cost­ly and ener­gy-inten­sive, first the inlet and lat­er also the out­let struc­tures are closed, so that the water lev­el in the pold­er is some­times sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than the water lev­el of the Elec­tric­i­ty or falls. This gives the farm­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to use the mead­ows and pas­tures as ear­ly as May.

Problematic water management

From an eco­log­i­cal point of view, this water man­age­ment from the 1930s pos­es a major prob­lem because many com­mu­ni­ties in the flood­plain that have estab­lished them­selves there in win­ter and spring sud­den­ly lose their habi­tat when the pold­ers are drained. In par­tic­u­lar, the birds that start­ed their breed­ing busi­ness on high­er areas in the pold­er, pro­tect­ed from the sur­round­ing water, sud­den­ly sit with their clutch­es on dry land, which then quick­ly become prey for the preda­to­ry mam­mals. For a flood­plain nation­al park this is an unten­able situation.

After all, at the con­stant insis­tence of the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion, the nation­al park admin­is­tra­tion stopped pump­ing every year at least in the Fid­di­chow Pold­er (10) in 2015. How­ev­er, the inlet and out­let struc­tures are still closed in spring. How­ev­er, they should remain open all year round, as a sci­en­tif­ic fea­si­bil­i­ty study com­mis­sioned by the Bran­den­burg gov­ern­ment itself demands. That is the next goal that the Nation­al Park Asso­ci­a­tion wants to achieve from the Nation­al Park Admin­is­tra­tion. In addi­tion, in the oth­er large wet pold­er, the Criewen Schwedter Pold­er (A/B), the inlet and out­let struc­tures should be closed at the ear­li­est on 31 May of each year. This is also a require­ment from the sci­en­tif­ic fea­si­bil­i­ty study.

Economic agriculture and wilderness development in conflict

If 50 per­cent of the nation­al park is to devel­op into a wilder­ness accord­ing to the cur­rent legal sit­u­a­tion, the water should be able to flow in and out unhin­dered, depend­ing on the cur­rent sta­tus of the Oder riv­er. For the agri­cul­tur­al areas that should con­tin­ue to be cul­ti­vat­ed exten­sive­ly (Zone II), a cer­tain (low!) Water lev­el must be guar­an­teed dur­ing the veg­e­ta­tion peri­od so that eco­nom­ic agri­cul­ture can still be prac­ticed. This is com­par­a­tive­ly easy for the Fid­di­chow­er Pold­er (10), which is to become a com­plete­ly wilder­ness area, and the Friedrich­sthaler Pold­er (5/6), which is to become pre­dom­i­nant­ly Zone II area. For the Criewen Schwedter Pold­er (A / B), in which Zone I and Zone II areas are close­ly inter­linked, it is like­ly to be very dif­fi­cult to cre­ate water con­di­tions that do jus­tice to agri­cul­ture and wilder­ness development.

Hydraulic maintenance measures

The hydraulic main­te­nance mea­sures on the fed­er­al water­ways, in par­tic­u­lar the Stro­mod­er and the Hohen­saat­en-Friedrich­sthaler water­ways, are also impor­tant. Here, after the so-called flood of the cen­tu­ry in 1997, all dykes were lav­ish­ly raised and widened, groynes were rebuilt and stone embank­ments were laid. All inlet and out­let struc­tures were ren­o­vat­ed or even rebuilt. The hydraulic engi­neer­ing sys­tems have now all been per­fect­ed again in accor­dance with the cur­rent stan­dards. It is doubt­ful whether this severe inter­ven­tion in Germany’s only flood­plain nation­al park was sen­si­ble and nec­es­sary. Because of the offi­cial rea­son “flood pro­tec­tion”, no counter-speech was allowed. In the future, the main­te­nance mea­sures will be about find­ing forms in dis­cus­sions with the Fed­er­al Water­way Admin­is­tra­tion that allow the use of the water­ways as a large ship­ping route and yet inter­fere with the nat­ur­al bal­ance as lit­tle as pos­si­ble, as it should be for a nation­al park. There is still a lot of (coöper­a­tion) work to be done by every­one involved.

Pumping station
Pump­ing station