WATER ABLAZE - Patagonia Sin Represas

comes to around €50,000, money which many people just cannot afford,
and properties have meanwhile been put up for compulsory auction
as a result! Then there are the sewage charges of several euros per
cubic metre, which owners of biological treatment plants did not have
to pay in the past. Finally, in an increasing number of towns, an additional
charge is being levied per square metre for the disposal of rainwater
which falls on paved-over areas of citizens’ properties. Although
§18 of the German Water Management Act grants biological water purification
parity of treatment with conventional industrial methods,
house owners are being forcibly connected to the main plant in an increasingly
ruthless manner. The following report from the Tagesspiegel
of September 10, 2008 illustrates one such case:
Briesensee. Barricades against the Compulsory Connection to
the Sewerage System.
Because she has her own biological sewage purification plant,
a mayoress from the Dahme-Spreewald District adamantly refused
to be connected to the public sewerage network. The police have
now carried her from her property. On Wednesday, the police forced
through the compulsory connection of two properties to the public
sewerage system. A police spokesman said that local mayoress Doris
Groger (Independent) had had to be carried from her property in
Briesensee (Dahme-Spreewald District). Five people were temporarily
taken into police custody. In Rauen (Oder-Spree District), on the
other hand, it was possible to persuade the house owners to allow
construction work to go ahead. According to reports, the protests
there remained purely verbal in nature.
In Briesensee, the Lieberose-Oberspreewald authorities had
summoned the police to help them enforce the compulsory
connection measures. The police spokesman said that the woman
had barricaded herself into the property together with her sons and
several supporters. She had welded up the gate, piled scrap metal
behind the entrance and placed numerous stones and bottles on the
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