Pollutants Imperil West-German Water

West Germany, a country where it rains every third day on average, could be headed for a shortage of drinking water.

Pesticides and fertilizers from the nation’s farms and airborne pollutants that seep into the earth with every rain are threatening the reservoirs of West Germany’s 3,600 water companies.

In rural areas in particular, the incidence of certain toxins is so high that wells have had to be closed. Tanker trucks now are the only source of drinking water for some isolated villages.

Scientists and ecologists report that the country is “poisoning its wells” and warn that the result, if the process goes unchecked, will be an acute shortage of potable water.

The government line, as presented by Agriculture Minister Ignaz Kiechle, is that toxic trace elements to be found in ground water “represent no danger to health.”

Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s administration, keen to be seen as the ecological motor of the European Community, finds itself under pressure from Brussels.

The EC Executive Commission is threatening to go before the European Court at Luxembourg if West Germany continues to balk at enforcing agreed-upon, European Communitywide water standards.

Regulations in force since 1986 forbid more than 50 milligrams of nitrate per quart of drinking water, for instance.

But water samples show that nitrate, a byproduct of over-fertilization with liquid manure, is present in more than double the allowed concentration in some West German regions.

In southwest Germany authorities have had to plug 150 wells, and countless other nitrate-tainted wells are in service only because officials have issued special exemptions.

Nitrate, once in the human body, becomes nitrite, a substance that can trigger strangulation among infants. It also metamorphoses into nitrosamine, a cancer agent.

Beginning this month, EC regulations will prescribe a pesticide ceiling of 0.1 micrograms per substance in a quart of drinking water--with a combined limit of 0.5 micrograms per quart.

Only one water company in five in West Germany is currently able to meet that requirement--and here, too, Bonn has promised exemptions of up to 10 years, during which time toxin levels can legally exceed the EC ceiling by as much as 20 times.

Water from the Haltern Water Co., which supplies some 1 million people in the industrial Ruhr area, has eight times the pesticide level allowed under the approaching EC regulations. Shutting down the facility would bring on the collapse of the water system in Europe’s most heavily populated region.

“Our main problem is that we never find the chief culprits,” reports Wolfram Such from the Siegburg Water Reservoir Assn. near Bonn.

Tests show high concentrations of the herbicide Diuron in Siegburg-area water. But farmers in the region deny using Diuron.

Experts harbor no doubts that the farmers are the worst polluters of West Germany’s water supplies. About 30,000 tons of highly poisonous pesticides and herbicides are sprayed onto the country’s fields each year. More toxins come from liquid manure from cattle farms.

Farmers resist pressure for change and instead blame the EC’s Common Agriculture Policy for pushing financial incentives for high-intensity crop production.

One possible way out may be taking shape in the southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg, where the government now levies a tax on water consumption and passes the money on to those farmers who can prove they do not use pesticides.

If the scheme is shown to reduce pollution levels, Bonn plans to introduce the system nationwide.

In the meantime, though, drinking water supplies face other threats.

Sulfur dioxide and heavy metals from industrial and motor vehicle emissions enter the ground along with rainwater and make their way from there via brooks and streams to the reservoirs.