The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815–2000

2. Europe's "World River"

CHAPTER 2 europe's "World ~er" ~ Rhine is Europe's busiest waterway. As the only river linking the -.1 ~~ps to the North Sea, it channels the flow of trade through Switzerland , Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The Rhine transports over 200 million metric tons of goods annually, far more cargo than is carried on any other European waterway. Seabound freight travels so fast and freely between Rotterdam and Basel that it is almost absurd to think of modernday Switzerland as a landlocked country.I The Rhine is puny compared with the Earth's mightiest streams. Its total length of around 1250 kilometers (775 miles), drainage basin of 185,000 square kilometers (71,400 square miles), and average delta discharge of 2200 cubic meters per second (2875 cubic yards/second) place it ninth among Eurasian rivers/ and it barely ranks in the top hundred rivers worldwide . The Nile is five times longer. The Amazon basin is more than thirty times greater in breadth. The Danube, Central Europe's largest river and the Rhine's nearest neighbor, carries nearly three times the water volume. But what the Rhine lacks in size it compensates for in navigational arteries and tributaries, including the Lippe, Ruhr, Mosel, Lahn, Nahe, Main, Neckar, Ill, and Aare. The Rhine is connected to the Baltic via the RhineHerne and other German canals, to France via the Rhine-Marne canal, to the Mediterranean via the Rhine-Rhone canal, and (since 1992) to the Black Sea via the Rhine-Main-Danube canal. The Port of Rotterdam- "The Gateway to Europe" on the Rhine mouth-is the number one destination of Mideast oil tankers and the world's largest ocean harbor. Its annual throughput ofbulk goods and general cargo (282.4 million metric tons in 1993) edges out even the great Asian ports of Singapore (273-7 million), Kobe (168.7 million), and Shanghai (167.9 million).3 Duisburg-Ruhrort, situated atop Europe's largest under2 I EUROPE'S WORLD RIVER ground coal deposits, boasts the world's largest inland harbor. Over seven hundred ships and barges cross the Dutch-German border each day, an average of one vessel every two minutes round the clock.4 Cologne is Europe's busiest rail hub for passenger and freight trains. Frankfurt's RhineMain Airport is Europe's second busiest air traffic center. No other river possesses such an extensive network of navigable tributaries, canals, seaports , inland harbors, and transportation links. Only the Mississippi-Missouri system transports more freight each year. The Rhine drainage basin is thick with people. Nearly fifty million humans live within its watershed, many of them packed together in just six urban conglomerates directly on its riverbanks: the Dutch "Randstad " region (Rotterdam and its urban environs); Germany's Rhine-Ruhr (Duisburg-Essen-Cologne), Rhine-Main (Frankfurt-Mainz-Wiesbaden), and Rhine-Neckar (Mannheim-Ludwigshafen) regions; France's Strasbourg ; and Switzerland's Basel canton.5 Twenty million people rely on Million Metric Tons 200 -----------;-k___cf-- 200 180 -----------f\/-'----'----- 180 160 ------------,/------ 160 140 ----------+------ 140 120 - - - - - - - - - t - - - - - - - 120 100 -----------j'------- 100 80 -----~~-+_-------80 60 ---.-~~+r~'---------60 40 --~___c+_-~rr--------40 20 --'---...:....w'-l-----I-Jf--------- 20 1900 1930 1960 1990 Figure 2.1 Volume ofgoods transported on the German Rhine, 1900-1990 (Adapted from Deutsche Kommission zur Reinhaltung des Rheins, RheinberichtI990, 13) 22 EUROPE'S WORLD RIVER the Rhine for their drinking water (thirty million if Lake Constance is included), and millions of others are indirectly dependent on the river for urban services, sanitation, transportation, and employment. Some of Europe's largest iron, steel, automobile, aluminum, textile, potash, and paper firms are headquartered on the Rhine, as are five of the world's biggest chemical-pharmaceutical firms: Bayer, BASF (Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik), Aventis (formerly Hoechst), Novartis (formerly Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz), and Roche (formerly Hoffmann-La Roche).6 The textile industries ofVoralberg (Austria) and the potash mines of Alsace (France) use the Rhine for waste disposal, while farmers in Baden (Germany) and the Netherlands are dependent on the river for crop irrigation. Without the Rhine, Switzerland's aluminum plants would lack the hydroelectric power needed for production and access to world markets. Also important for many industries are the hundreds of conventional power plants, as well as many nuclear ones (at Beznau, Gosgen-Daniken, Leibstadt, Biblis, Philippsburg, Fessenheim, Cattenom, and Neckar-Westheim) that utilize the Rhine and its tributaries for cooling purposes. The Rhine, in short, is a...