Low Water Threatens Key Rhine Shipping Route

Low water levels could bring commercial shipping on a critical stretch of Germany’s Rhine River to a halt as early as this week.

The German Inland Waterway Shipping Association (BDB) warned that the Kaub gauge is forecast to fall into single digits for the first time. Kaub, south of Koblenz, is a critical bottleneck for shipping on the Middle Rhine.

BDB director general Jens Schwanen said freight transport would no longer be commercially viable in the area at such low levels. Passenger and cruise ships would also be affected.

“The Rhine would then essentially no longer be navigable along its entire length, thereby dividing it into two parts”, Schwanen told the Rheinische Post.

Shipping could continue in the north between the ports of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp and Cologne, as well as on western Germany’s canal network. To the south, traffic could continue on waterways including the Main, Moselle and Neckar and the Main-Danube Canal.

North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland have temporarily eased restrictions on Sunday and public holiday truck traffic to help alleviate freight disruptions caused by low water levels.

(Reuters, bak)