Along the fabled Danube River, which snakes its way for 1,800 miles from the Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea in Romania, scores of towns — such as the small Romanian port of Zimnicea on the Bulgarian border — depend on the waterway for their livelihood.
Along the fabled Danube River, which snakes its way for 1,800 miles from the Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea in Romania, scores of towns — such as the small Romanian port of Zimnicea on the Bulgarian border — depend on the waterway for their livelihood. But this summer’s epic drought and historic high temperatures, now in a fifth grueling month, have depleted the once-mighty Danube, upending everything that Zimnicea’s residents — port workers, farmers, the shipping industry, anglers, restaurant owners, and families — had for generations counted on to sustain themselves. Never in living memory has the river run so low, with large areas of mud-cracked river bottom exposed along Zimnicea’s shorelines, the dead mollusks evidence of the devastating toll on riverine life.
With the Danube flowing at less than half its usual summer volume, dozens of cargo barges lie motionless in Zimnicea’s harbor, waiting for a turn to use the only channel deep enough for passage. Locals are collecting the scant rainwater to use for household purposes in order to save potable water from the Danube for drinking. Children play along the shoreline’s new beaches.
As elsewhere along the Danube — and, indeed, across much of Europe this summer — emergency dredging teams have been called in to deepen the riverway to break the cargo jam. Nevertheless, grain transports emanating from Ukraine — with many of its Black Sea ports controlled by Russia, the Danube is an alternative route for the war-wracked country to export foodstuffs — have been forced to shed cargo weight in order to pass, when they can pass at all.
Read more at Yale Environment 360
Photo Credit: tadhanna via Pixabay
