Mur

20181114: Innere Stadt | Puchstraße

Martin arrived punctually, wearing lederhosen, a black suede sports jacket, fashionable pointed-toed leather shoes, and long, thick socks. I didn’t notice the entire outfit until he was behind the lens; my attention was on his frizzled white beard; each hair seemed to be dislodged, present only by a range of knots that kept it from falling to the floor. His spirit was a brisk as a walk over the hills to a neighbors house for dinner. He exudes positivity; he glowed. Romana arrived shortly after; reserved and concise, she counter-balanced Martin perfectly. I had positioned a light fixture comprised of the letters "over" next to the futon on which they sat.

The Zentraler Speicherkanal (ZSK) along with the powerplant and other secondary constructions are collectively part of what’s referred to as the Murkraftwerk. My operating knowledge of the ZSK was primarily taken from my discussion with Steven Weiss. Martin and Romana were selected by Eva as representatives of the "activist" side of the ZSK story. Steven too had worked with them, and I was cognizant that the project so far was being propelled into a domain of political utility. Whom I was supplied as interlocutors would invariably bend the project into a realm of instrumentality from which I’m characteristically opposed.

The questions that I formulated in advanced were: When did their participation begin? What's the issue for Rettet die Mur? What's the goal of Rettet die Mur? Talk about tiny particulate matter. How did you feel when the hydropower plant was finally pushed through? What are the primary urban ecological issues facing Graz? Does sewage leaking into the Mur bother them? Is conservation or remediation occurring in Graz? What is the relation between industry and environmentalism in Graz? I was prepared but too ambitious.

With these question at hand I simply asked: What was Rettet die Mur trying to save? That is, what is the Mur to them? A river? Water? An ecosystem? A location? An entity frozen in time?

Romana recounted the deal protesters made with the hydropower plant. The power plant would replace 1.5 trees for each felled tree. But there was disagreement between the protesters and the power plant company as to what constituted a tree. The final decision was only trees larger than a certain diameter would be counted and replaced; understandably, the protesters felt cheated. 20,000 trees were cut, but only 6,000 old trees were counted.

The other problem was where the new trees would be planted. In order to filter air particulates and fulfill some of the function of the felled trees, the new trees must be near to where the pollution occurs, or where the polluted air is being inhaled by people. Since the Mur runs through the city, the area where the original trees were was ideal, for want of change: central, accessible and useful. It's expected that the new trees will be planted at the periphery of the city where they would be less instrumental for cleaning air.

The importance of "cleaner" water, i.e. less untreated sewer and storm water entering the Mur was unimportant to them in light of the trade offs. To them, the fact that the Mur had quite high organic matter in the water upstream of Graz didn’t rationalize a program for improving water quality. Paper mills, industry, and sedimentation from other dams meant that the untreated sewage water contributed only 2-3% of the organic load of the water. Nor were they convinced that the European Water Directive encouraged Graz to improve the Mur. On this point, I wondered again what it was that was trying to be saved.

The hydropower plant would also change the run of the river, dam up the water 6 meters. The habitat of the huchen salmon would be impacted, or destroyed. A snake that is near extinction may be quelled. So while the profit of the energy would be private; the destruction would be collective. Because the introduction of a hydropower plant would make the current sewer overflows non-functional as they would be below the raised level of the water, a suspicion of dependency arose: was the hydropower solving a problem of the sewer by partially paying for the Speicherkanal, or was the Speicherkanal necessary to solve the problem caused by the hydropower plant? The total cost of the Speicherkanal was 160 million euro, half of which was paid by the hydropower plant and half was paid by tax dollars. So this logistical order of operations was congruent to the financial suspicion of dependency: were tax payers bailing out a corporation or was a corporation paying for civil infrastructure? 


Martin opposed “end of pipe” solutions for collecting and treating water and believed that the amount of water that was to be collected by the ZSK could be percolated around the city. Historically, this is true for much of the time, but centennial floods, including the 1860 flood that took lives and motivated the covering of the Graz rivers, contests his calculations. Essentially, Martin and Romana thought of rainwater as a resource, not a problem. And it’s hard to argue with his main critique of urban life: Cities operate on linear relations to energy, food, water, and people, taking it all in and spewing it out. In contrast to the cycles with which nature works, which are local, the city itself sounds like a bad citizen, a dated machine or an insatiable digestive tract. “The city is a parasite on the landscape,” Romana told us.

Collectively, the characteristic of the Murkraftwerk gave everyone something to which to be opposed; concomitantly the storage sewer became a target of the activists as well. In a divergent strategy of divide and conquer, the activists multiplied their opponents from one, the hydropower plant, to four: Holding Graz, which was the city-owned private company that manages waste and sewage, Technische Universität Graz, which designed the Speicherkanal, Verbund, the electrical company who will operate the hydropower plant, and the Mayor Siegfried Nagl, who supported the projects.

There were four big demonstration of the opposition to the power plant and the Speicherkanal, in which 2-4,000 people participated. A public surveyed was conducted and revealed that the majority of the signatories were not in favor of the power plant. People protested the tree cutting by climbing the trees, building tree houses and gathering support. The mental image of people in trees reminded me of 1980s protest in USA (was this when and where the expression 'tree hugger' was developed?). But the day after a special election in which the Green Party separated from the reigning party, the Social Democrats, and another party joined them, the trees were cut in a militant manner. The protests were over.

But there were severe legal hurdles that plagued both sides of the project. The water rights of the river exist in a problematic juridical gray zone, having been passed from days of monarchic oversight directly into private hands without a presumption of public good, public use, or public access. They are bought and sold by hydropower companies who can only compensate fishing clubs whose river will be forever changed. The fisherman have no legal standing. Another regulation requires that a hydropower plant make use of the entire breadth of the river, rather than just half of the river. The interface of what’s legal and what’s political meant that Rettet die Mur could not find a law office that would take their case in Graz, so the protesters went all the way to Vienna for legal aid. For the powerplant, the local laws being bent by the Mayor could be corrected by Austrian or EU regulators. The evacuation of the tree protesters was subsequently determined to have been illegal.

Amidst the ecological questions in which both Romana and Martin were experts, and under the banner against which they had fought the project, they returned again and again to the political element: suspected corruption and blatant undermining of democratic processes. Later I learned that Romana was in the midst of a legal battle that could have a toll on her personal finances.

The tree cutting made timber of the public trust. The city’s own future planning had not included a power plant and the plan had been believed by its citizens. The communication of the Murkraftwerk was tardy, and when information was finally released, it was perceived as propagandistic and one-sided. Indeed, even the exhibition and informational space in Holding Graz was opened to the public, my first observation was that there was no mention of anything detrimental to the environment, as if the entire project had existed without serious opposition. The news media – Kleine Zeitung – television and radio is suspected of being an extension of city hall, ruled by money and personal interests.

Although the hydropower plant is, as of 2019, almost finished and expected to open in the spring, and that the Speicherkanal is nearly completed, Romana and Martin do not believe the fight is over. They hope to win in court and force the hydropower plant to pay for the entire storage sewer, and/or get Mayor Nagel pushed out of office. Even such a partial victory would be a smoke signal against future endeavors and a pivot toward the green and blue future that Romana hope to see grow.


http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/water-framework/index_en.html

Graz has the Stadtentwicklung-Konzept

https://www.graz.at/cms/ziel/7758015/DE