In trying to convince our power industry and politicians that it makes no sense to build up the last free-flowing river sections in Austria only to gain a few percent more energy output, friendly words don’t help,” raved Bernd Lötsch, the outgoing Director of Natural History Museum Vienna. Together with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Austria and the river rescue platform “Flüsse voller Leben”, the ecological pioneer who also helped to thwart the Danube hydropower project at Hainburg now wants to inform the public in detail what environmental treasures need to be sacrificed as a result of the hydropower expansion programme.
Like Lötsch, WWF Austria’s President Helmut Pechlaner and WWF Austria’s Vice Managing Director Andreas Wurzer acknowledge hydropower’s vital contribution to the rebuild of our domestic economy after the Second World War. But they also point out that Austria’s high standard of living directly results from a timely restriction of hydropower expansion; the twoweek tour through Austria has made it necessary to reintroduce such restrictions.
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(Source: aqua press 3/2009, Mag. Christof Hahn)
