The Rhine is one of the world’s greatest rivers, rich in history and the source of countless legends. It is also one of the most commercially significant waterways and is second only to the Mississippi in the amount of freight traffic it transports.

Prior to the 19th century, much of the Rhine was still a wild river following a meandering course through a very wide floodplain while supporting a rich and diverse fish and wildlife population. Things began to change, however, in the early 19th century when engineers undertook to straighten the Rhine and make it easier to navigate. Their work brought improvements: a shorter and more direct channel, a reduction in floods, opening of more land for development, and a reduction in diseases like malaria. Unfortunately, their improvements also brought a number of problems: more flooding downstream, increased pollution and the reduction of the fish and wildlife population. By the 1970s, people were calling the Rhine an canal that was verging on becoming a sewer.

Marc Cioc’s book provides an eco-biography of the Rhine from 1815-2000 that explains in a very readable form the changes introduced to the Rhine during these years and the sources of the problems affecting the Rhine. Chapter two begins with an overview of the Rhine and provides a collection of fascinating facts and figures about the river and its tributaries. The chapter then talks about the multi-national Rhine Commission established by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 which focused on modifying the Rhine for economic reasons. Cioc emphasizes the multi-national cooperation needed for agreeing on how to handle the Rhine, cooperation that helped set the stage for further cooperation many years later within the EU.

Chapter three continues with a discussion of the actual modifications made to the river. The key figure driving river modifications on the Upper Rhine was a Herr Tulla and Cioc covers his contributions in depth. On the Middle Rhine, the river engineering was driven by Prussia. The Dutch were active in modifying the Rhine’s path to the sea. Particularly interesting were the explanations of the downsides of these modifications particularly with regard to flooding where improvements on the Upper Rhine led to more floods downstream. Also interesting was how the changes in the navigability of the river and the improved technologies of ships led to an explosion of freight transport on the river.

The fourth chapter then talks about the mining industries that developed along the Rhine and which had the practice of just dumping their wastewater directly in the Rhine or in one of its tributaries. Industry argued that it was economically acceptable to sacrifice small sections of the river in order to allow them to cheaply dispose of wastes. The Rhine was able to survive this until the volume of mining increased so much that the sacrificial stretches of the river covered the greatest part of the river and its tributaries.

The fifth chapter then looks at the chemical industry as well as the paper industry which grew up directly on the banks of the Rhine and its tributaries. Cioc does a particularly good job on this topic. He provides a high-level history of the chemical industry and explains in a very understandable fashion exactly which aspects of each chemical process resulted in what type of pollution. In 1986, the Rhine experienced it’s worst environmental disaster when a Sandoz chemical storage facility in Basel caught on fire. Firefighters were able to put out the fire, but the water from their firehoses drained into the Rhine carrying with them lot of the pesticides and other chemicals that had been in the storage facility. As this chemical mess proceeded downstream it managed to kill off lots of the fish and wildlife population along the river. This disaster at least served as a wake-up call and stimulated people to look at river restoration.

Chapter six then talks about the loss of biodiversity explaining which types of changes in the river impact which species. This sets up the discussion in Chapter seven about the restoration efforts that were started in the 1970s and 1980s.

This book is not for everyone; however, I found it to be fascinating which is one reason my review is so long. It is a book I could recommend to anyone interested in environmental history. European history, and civil/water engineering. ( )

On page 146 of The Rhine: An Eco-Biography , 1815-2000, Mark Cioc writes, "One hundred fifty years of hydraulic tinkering had turned the Rhine into a soulless shadow of its former self. Once clean, it was now filthy; once broad, it was now narrow; once bursting with life, it was now half-dead." Cioc chronicles how the once mythical and enchanting Rhine was altered in the wake of Napoleon and industrial revolution to become nothing more than a canal. The Rhine Commission, created in 1815, took decisions out of the hands of politicians and placed them in those of engineers who cared little for their environmental impact. They narrowed and straightened the Rhine, removing its islands and shortening it. The tamed Rhine, confined to a single riverbed supplied water, waste removal, power, industrial processes, transportation, and recreation. This last was given least priority. The engineers minimized their handy work on some of more touristy lengths, but gave no consideration to birds, fish, and mammals. In altering the flood plain birds lost much of their habitat. By chopping up the Rhine into dammed segments, the engineers made it impossible for migrating fish to reach their habitats. If the engineers were uninterested in preserving nature, the statesmen were less so. Driven by the Prussians, the main political concern was to foster growth to Germany's economic and military power. The chemical, coal, and dye industries pumped millions of tons of waste in the Rhine. Instead of regulating these emissions, industrial and political leaders adhered to the discredited notion that significant water would dilute the toxic waste. The effect, however, was to kill off more wildlife habitat and to turn some of the feeder rivers into the foulest stretches of water in the world. Conservation came late in Germany, long after the United States. As Cioc chronicles, the first effective pollution controls were only implemented in the 1970s and 1980s. The good news is this new regime is working to vastly reduce pollution. Restoring wildlife is proving much more difficult. Although some of the damage can be mitigated, the Rhine will never be what it once was.

From my blog: http://gregshistoryblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/europes-sewer.html ( )