Weather Disaster in Austria Finger Pointing After Severe Flooding in Small Town
Winfrid Herbst in Dürrnberg: "You asshole!"
Foto: Jan Petter / DER SPIEGEL
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Standing up in the forest, Winfrid Herbst is wrestling with his emotions. Just a moment ago in the car, he had still been combative, even joking about the situation in which he finds himself. But here, surrounded by nature, his voice suddenly fails him. His lower lip starts quivering and his small, green-brown eyes start blinking faster. "Excuse me,” Herbst says, turning away for a moment. "I have never been good with this kind of injustice.”
Since August 1, Herbst, 73, has been the focus of heavy criticism. That’s when the mayor of the Austrian town of Hallein, Alexander Stangassinger, said in an interview that flood protection in his town had been delayed by ultimately unsuccessful appeals, including those launched by "environmental organizations." Without these delays, Stangassinger said, "the floods would have been far less intense or perhaps prevented entirely."
After the catastrophe: Could the flood disaster in Hallein have been prevented?
Foto: Jan Hetfleisch / Getty ImagesThe main environmental organization in question is the Nature Conservation Association in the state of Salzburg, of which Herbst has been chairman since 2017. Since then, he has signed all of the organization's important correspondence, including those letters rejecting the planned construction of a 120-meter (395-foot) concrete wall in the hills above Hallein.
The municipality located south of Salzburg was one of the towns hit hardest by the Alpine floods earlier this month, with rains transforming the tiny creek in the center into a raging torrent of water and mud. On its way down, it swept up cars and people, and dragging them through the streets. It was only by luck that no one drowned, as the videos of the catastrophe make clear.
#Hallein vor wenigen Minuten. #Hochwasser #Salzburg pic.twitter.com/zbVI8yYr7w
— Der Mario (@DerMarioO) July 17, 2021
"You Asshole!"
The debate over who should be held accountable for the flooding could have remained the realm of the local newspapers. But even before the last basement had been pumped free of water, Austrian Agriculture Minister Elisabeth Köstinger of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) escalated the dispute. "The objections were aimed at preventing effective barrier structures because the landscape was seen as being at risk,” she said.
Ever since, Winfrid Herbst’s telephone has been ringing every few minutes.
The media all want his reaction. The citizens, mostly men, want to insult or lecture him. Suddenly, people were yelling "You asshole!" at him, Herbst recalls.
Criticism of environmentalist Herbst: "The objections were aimed at preventing effective barrier structures."
Foto: Jan Petter / DER SPIEGELThe dispute in Austria between nature conservationists and political leaders is one that many people around the world are familiar with. And they are likely to grow in frequency: All leading experts, after all, agree that climate change is making extreme weather events more likely. But what should our response look like?
Should homes that have been washed away in flooding be rebuilt in the same place? Do protective walls that have been inundated by flood waters simply need to be built higher after each disaster? Or should people retreat now, leaving the danger zones and giving nature more space? Who gets to make those decisions? Who will be affected? All of those issues are currently at stake.
The destruction in Hallein was on full display, even five days after the waters subsided. Entire blocks of houses were still surrounded by sandbags and boarded up several days later, and a brown line at shoulder height could still be seen on some store windows. Dredging and pumping was going on everywhere, though the cars had already been pulled out of the narrow creek bed.
Hallein in Austria after the flooding: Five days after the water swept through the town, it still feels like mud is caked to every spot in the center.
Foto: Jan Hetfleisch / Getty ImagesA little further up the hillside, Gerhard Angerer is standing next to Kothbach Creek, clutching his head, a small scab to the right of one of his eyes. The 68-year-old says that he fell when the water rushed through his home. It was only with a bit of luck that his wife found him motionless on the floor and was able to help him get to the second floor. "We’ve lived here almost our whole lives, but there has never been anything like this,” Angerer says.
Many people in Hallein feel the same way. Wilfried Grundtner lives and works right next door, not even two meters away from Kothbach Creek, in an old house on a small bridge. He is a fifth-generation bike store owner, and he came within a hair of having his entire life’s work destroyed.
When the water arrived, it was like a drumbeat, the 63-year-old says. As if someone had put rocks in a washing machine. Grundtner sensed the danger and acted quickly.
Bike shop owner Wilfried Grundtner: It was as if someone had put rocks in a washing machine.
Foto: Jan Petter / DER SPIEGELHe and some neighbors sealed off the alley with sheet metal and boards and they hoisted a 750-kilogram (1,653 pound) potted olive tree behind it, Grundtner says. It was enough to hold back the water, but only barely. When he then tried to get his car, a Land Rover Defender, to safety, the vehicle was already floating in the water.
What unites residents along Kothbach Creek isn’t the damage or the numerous tragic stories – it is the feeling that they weren’t warned in time. "There was no siren, no alarm. The water just came,” says one person who asked not to be quoted by name. "By the time we tried to call the fire department, no one was answering,” another adds.
The calamity appears to have overwhelmed the entire community. Is that one of the reasons the finger pointing started so quickly? Winfrid Herbst certainly thinks so. "Unpopular critics are getting vilified,” he wrote in a press release. "The fear, despair and dismay of the populace is being exploited in a morally and democratically reprehensible manner.”
The Problem Starts in the Mountains
To understand the full dimension of the conflict, a trip into the mountains above Hallein is necessary. Here, in a hiking area popular with locals and tourists alike, complete with a summer toboggan run, is where the structures in question are planned for construction - the structures that have put the Nature Conservation Association in the crosshairs of critics.
The first of the barriers has caused the most trouble for Winfrid Herbst, even though it hasn’t been built yet - or, to be more precise, because it hasn’t been built yet. A narrow asphalted forest path leads to the site along a brook that eventually flows into Kothbach Creek.
The town now plans to erect the long-planned barrier wall here to slow down any future floods. The planned structure measures 124 meters long and 15 meters high. It will completely seal off the little valley. "A monster,” laments Herbst, as he traces its outline in the air in the midday heat.
Herbst is no newcomer to the region. He spent 25 years as head of Salzburg's sanitation department and before that, he was one of the first public officials in the country to specialize in environmental concerns. For 15 years, he was also a member of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖPV), the Christian Democratic political body that dominates the state's political landscape. Perhaps the attacks are so painful for him because they are essentially coming from his own family. The 73-year-old says that environmental protection is his life’s work, that he can’t help it. Even as a child, he says, he was concerned about the preservation of plants and the protection of animals. The work he does for the Nature Conservation Association is unpaid.
Up on the mountainside, Herbst says that he would prefer the water of Kothbach Creek to be diverted a little higher upstream, in a natural depression located just below a farm. Such a diversion, he says, would only require a small wall to be erected - one that could then be covered with soil and grass.
The depression that Herbst and the Nature Conservation Association had proposed as a natural barrier
Foto: Jan Petter / DER SPIEGEL"Our proposal was equally good and would have cost the same,” Herbst points out. He says the authority responsible for managing free-flowing streams had checked and approved everything. But when the farmer in question didn’t play along, the town stuck to its variant of the project. Now, the originally planned structure is moving ahead several years behind schedule. That delay is now causing the ire.
The situation, of course, isn’t really quite that simple. The small stream in question only carries one-tenth of the water that ultimately ends up in Kothbach Creek. Also, Herbst is nowhere near as fundamentally opposed to concrete as it might seem at first. There is, in fact, a second structure further upstream that will hold back even more water, and it has nonetheless been supported by the Nature Conservation Association.
Indeed, construction is already underway on the second barrier - with no opposition whatsoever. The wall, located in the village of Dürrnberg, will be 84 meters long and 15 meters high. The difference is that the gray colossus will soon disappear under a meadow, just as Herbst had envisioned for the structure he proposed much further downstream.
And the dam, which will hold back 80,000 cubic meters of water, is located in a natural depression that provides additional space without requiring concrete - a clever structure high up in the mountains.
Local resident Robert Hallinger is also critical of the construction plans: "Concrete is our petroleum in Austria and we can’t seem to get away from it."
Foto: Jan Petter / DER SPIEGELThe truth is that Austria has plenty of experience in flood protection. The country has had a separate national authority for decades that manages the hazards presented by wild streams and avalanches. The government pays for many of the construction projects, and only a small part has to be co-financed by the local authorities or the people affected.
But maintenance and upkeep after they are built is the responsibility of the municipalities. And if you look at one of the basins around Hallein, it’s pretty obvious that they were already well filled with trees and debris before the flood. It looks like a bathtub that has never been cleaned after the water is drained. Was that the true problem here?
"People would rather have new construction done rather than maintaining the existing protective structures," says Robert Hallinger, a Dürrnberg resident who works for one of the country’s major hydropower producers. "Concrete is our petroleum in Austria and we can’t seem to get away from it."
Austria does, in fact, have above-average land usage compared to the rest of the world, even though the land available for construction has always been limited here by the Alps. Nonetheless, people have continued to build and build, not least for the tourists. But in times of a growing flood risk, the model may be reaching its limits.
One of the existing flood barriers in the forest: Residents and nature conservation groups criticize the fact that the basins weren't cleared regularly before the floods.
Foto: Jan Petter / DER SPIEGEL"We can’t keep pouring concrete and thinking that will be enough,” says Winfrid Herbst. "We have to think about the mountains and make use of their features. Otherwise, we’ll end up living here covered in concrete and will still be surprised that the groundwater rises and the rain comes from above.”
If it were up to him and his fellow campaigners, flood protection would function on a smaller scale and more locally in the future. From the very top of the mountain to the very bottom, he says, there are many ways to slow the water in natural depressions.
The affected farmers would receive a small annual payment for their cooperation or, should it be necessary, compensation payments. "You can plan with that,” says Herbst.
Damage caused by the floods: The problem starts in the mountains
Foto: Jan Petter / DER SPIEGELThe debate in Austria also highlights the shifting political debate in Austria. Instead of being fundamentally opposed to climate and environmental protection, as they were in the past, conservatives now sometimes use it to challenge objections from environmentalists.
The argument is that precisely because the issue is so important and the time so pressing, there should be less discussion. Instead, as Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of the ÖVP recently railed, environmentalists are leading the country "back to the Stone Age.” Meanwhile, his agricultural minister is calling for "different framework conditions” in flood protection.
That makes it sound as though the rights of residents and environmental organizations to object could be curbed by the government in the future. The logical consequence of that would likely be more concrete walls and less opposition. These are considerations that could also soon be seen in those parts of Germany that were hit hard by flooding this summer. It would be a license to carry on with the status quo after the disaster.
For Winfrid Herbst, that would be even worse than the attacks leveled against him. "Our mountains," he says, "would be lost.”
This piece is part of the Global Societies series. The project runs for three years and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Global Societies series involves journalists reporting in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe on injustices, societal challenges and sustainable development in a globalized world. A selection of the features, analyses, photo essays, videos and podcasts, which originally appear in DER SPIEGEL’s Foreign Desk section, will also appear in the Global Societies section of DER SPIEGEL International. The project is initially scheduled to run for three years and receives financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
