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Comment by larusso | Hacker News Reader

This report seems to be a bit one-sided. They say the lakes will be used as reservoirs for rivers like the spree. The issue is that the spree was feed for years with excess water from the old mines which had to pump the water out. Now they don’t pump water anymore to fill up these lakes and some parts of the spree run low on water during summer. The water table fell a lot over the last 10 to 20 years in Berlin. I’m not sure what exactly contributed to this situation overall. But they had plans to pump water from the Elbe into the Spree to help out with the situation. But cities downstream are not happy about the situation. For me this feels like a somewhat similar situation to the Colorado River situation with the upper and lower basins.

https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2026/07/wasser-mangel-...

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We have this generally in parts of Europe.

Each summer now the atomic plants in France have to shut down (or at least reduce their power) since the rivers don't have enough cooling water anymore. The same happened to a lesser extend in Germany --- lesser extend because we made the wise decision not use bet one atomic plants anymore.

In Germany, the river "Rhein" is in the summer so low on water that tanker ships with oil and diesel can't have to reduce what they carry. As a result, even with out the USA creating yet-again-trouble (this time in the Straits of Hormuz) gas prices at the filling stations are a higher.

The last time I made holiday in upper italy they had warnings that the area 20 km north of these seas (Lago maggiore, Lago di Como, Lago Di Lugano) have too little water and tourists were discouraged to go there.

People know that it won't snow as reliably anymore in the Alps as it used to do. But they see this only as a problem with skying. But it also rains less. The glaciers are reducing each year. Once they are completely gone, the european rivers fed by them will have even less water.

Areas like the Spree from that article aren't however influenced by the Alps. But there you also have less rain. In the center of Germany is the "Edersee". It provides electric power is a nice tourist destination ... and each summer it is intentionally emptied (almost). Because the main job of the sea is to provide enough water for the Weser (a river going to Bremen) so that commercial ships can operate there.

> The water table fell a lot over the last 10 to 20 years in Berlin. I’m not sure what exactly contributed to this situation overal

Climate change, as your article says.

It also says that they want to use those new lakes as reservoirs to help out the situation.

Yes climate change is the biggest issue. But also the fact that the spree was artificially topped up for roughly 100 years and the cities and industries count on that water.

So it will be rough for the area. It’s man-made though. That’s why I compared it to the Colorado basin situation around lake Lake Mead. Here is another article: https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/spr...

Only temporarily. If water was being pumped out of the mines into the spree, and now is filling the lake, that only affects the spree until the lakes are full. Then the same amount of water will again flow into the spree as when pumping was happening.

The only problem I see there is that filling a lake takes a while.

Up to evaporation and vegetation evaporation changes. Don't lakes have an enormous surface?

> Then the same amount of water will again flow into the spree as when pumping was happening.

If the water table was falling, that seems optimistic.

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