Cooperating with farmers to protect medieval forest
Augsburg, Germany, Germany
Stadtwerke Augsburg (swa) was established in 2000 as an independent company fully owned by the City of Augsburg. It provides water to approximately 350,000 people in Augsburg and neighbouring areas. In addition, swa runs the city’s gas and electricity supplies and manages the public transport system in Augsburg. The nearby Siebentisch forest and the Lechau-meadows (Lechauen) provide the City of Augsburg with very high-quality water that requires zero treatment on its way from source to user. In the early 1980s, water quality was deteriorating due to agricultural and industrial activities in the surrounding area. To prevent investment in costly downstream treatment, swa took action to protect the water at its source with a three-point action plan.
©Morgan Heim
Challenges: Water supply for the city of Augsburg comes from groundwater stored in Ice Age limestone gravel in the Siebentisch forest and in the Lechau-meadows south of Augsburg. The latter is the city’s main water catchment area, with more than t60 wells for water abstraction. .It has been a Natura 2000 site under the Habitats Directive since November 2004. The city started acquiring forests in 1602 and has been managing them in a near-natural state ever since, jointly with the city’s Forestry Administration. Nowadays, however, the catchment area for the city includes farmland, gardens, and even some industrial areas. In the early 1980s, concerns over water quality grew due to increased nitrate content in the groundwater from pesticides and chemicals from neighbouring industrial and farming activities.
Financing: The city of Augsburg ranked as one of the top 10 cheapest water providers among big cities in Germany in 2010. Water in Augsburg is sold for EUR 1.44 per cubic metre, of which 15 percent is used to finance all groundwater protection measures, including direct payments to farmers, monitoring and administration, and land acquisition (2010). The additional 15 percent to finance source water protection remains less than what would have been incurred should water treatment have been implemented.
Actions and impacts: In 1988, the city and swa recognised the urgent need to protect groundwater at source in both catchment areas to eliminate costly downstream treatment. That year, swa developed and launched a management plan based on three pillars: water protection zones, land acquisition, and cooperation with farmers. As a first step, swa systematically set out to acquire farm and industrial land in the water protection zones to convert it into green spaces. This land was then leased out to farmers under certain restrictions, including limitations on the use of pesticides and fertilisers. By 2019, swa had acquired 500 hectares for EUR 70 million. In 1991 swa significantly expanded the water protection zone south of the city in the Lechau-meadows) in response to a new Bavarian state regulation and by imposing strict limitations on farmers’ use of pesticides and manure in these zones.
Swa established a cooperation model with farmers in the water protection zones, providing consultation services, financial incentives, and subsidies for acquiring equipment. A cost-benefit analysis in 2013 showed that the costs of groundwater quality monitoring and natural protection at source would be approximately 5 percent lower than the costs associated with water treatment.
The impact of these actions on groundwater quality has been impressive. Nitrate concentration in groundwater has decreased by 5-10mg/l between 1990 and 2018 from an original level of 40mg/l. Of the 1,400 hectares of farmland in the water protection zones, 45 obtained an eco-certificate, 600 apply groundwater protection measures but are not eco-certified, and 500 (32 percent) are owned by swa and leased out to farmers under strict restrictions limiting the use of fertilisers and pesticides.
©Scott Warren
Governance: Critical to success was swa’s approach to establishing cooperation with farmers. This traces back to a joint research project financed by the German Ministry for Research and Technology in 1989. It established a forum for dialogue between experts and practitioners in farming and water resources management to explore collaboration opportunities for protecting water resources. At first, only three farmers took part in Augsburg’s cooperation model, but this number had risen to 75 percent of all farmers in the area by 2019.
Augsburg’s cooperation model is based on consultation as well as contractual agreements with farmers. It starts with deploying specialised swa staff and agricultural experts to conduct individual and group consultations with farmers, as well as mineral balances for their land. Consultation is complemented by an assortment of voluntary contractual agreements. The most common and foundational contract is the basic package (Grundpaket), which includes financial incentives to facilitate the transition to agricultural practices that protect groundwater. The Grundpaket consists of a complex mix of agricultural best practices and monitoring measures that the swa developed with the Technical University of Munich in Weihenstephan. Payments consist of a minimum amount of EUR 60 per hectare, which can then be supplemented by an additional nitrate premium of up to EUR 200 per hectare, varying according to reductions achieved. Conversely, if monitoring reveals high nitrate levels, fees are deducted from the payment to farmers.
In combination with or independent of the Grundpaket, farmers can sign additional agreements which commit other defined pieces of land to certain protective practices. These include abstaining from the use of triazine herbicides on maize fields, cultivating clover grass as soil cover for a continuous period of five years, and converting to organic farming. Further financial support is given in the form of subsidies of up to 50 percent for procuring environmentally friendly technologies, such as harrows for mechanical weed control or band sprayers for maize plantations.
The adoption of this approach required no legal or regulatory changes. This can be attributed in part to swa’s legal status: despite being fully owned by the municipality, swa has maintained relative independence since its establishment as a public company in 2000.
References
AFP. (2019). Why Germany’s Augsburg has been granted UNESCO World Heritage status.
European Environment Agency (EEA). (2019). European Environment Agency. Retrieved from: Lechauen zwischen Königsbrunn und Augsburg.
Otillinger, F. & Sailer, E. (2019). Augsburgs Trinkwasser auf dem Weg zum Welterbe. Augsburg: top Schwaben.
Otillinger, F., Sailer, E. & Weidel, G. (2010). 20 Jahre grundwasserschonende Landwirtschaft in Augsburg – eine Erfolgsstory?. energie | wasser-praxis: Organisation und Management, 02, pp. 40-46.
Stadtwerke Augsburg (swa). (2015). Das Augsburger (Vorzeige-) Modell. Augsburg: swa.
©Stuart Palley
