Green leader calls for register tracking water withdrawals

Green Party leader Sandra Krautwaschl has called for a register of water withdrawals in Styria to show where water is flowing and how much is being taken, ORF Steiermark reported.

Speaking to ORF Steiermark journalist Ulli Enzinger in an interview with the leaders of the parties in the Styrian state parliament, Krautwaschl said the summer heat had softened the Freedom Party’s resistance to taking action. She said the state governor had avoided the issue for four months before taking up the Greens’ call for a heat summit.

Krautwaschl said many issues had nevertheless been left unresolved. She said she had expected the government to involve experts and seriously consider the Greens’ proposed solutions.

In the short term, she called for measures to retain water in the landscape and to enable and support storage ponds, particularly for agriculture. A water withdrawal register was also needed, she said, to identify where water was flowing, where conflicts could arise in future and how those conflicts could be addressed technically.

But technical solutions alone would not be enough, Krautwaschl said. Building pipelines would help only if enough water remained available for distribution. The state needed to address the issue now to manage future years and summers better, she said.