Münster (dpa / lnw) - In Münster, trees are irrigated with hundreds of thousands of liters of water from indoor swimming pools. The bathrooms are therefore drained anyway for maintenance work and cleaning, as the city announced on Monday. The campaign has been held annually since 2020 and is not a direct reaction to the current drought. The WDR had previously reported about it.
The water is first pumped with hoses into pump trucks with a capacity of up to 10,000 liters, which then take it to nearby trees. Around 475,000 liters had already been pumped out in the Ostbad on Monday, and a similar amount from another pool should follow on Tuesday. The chlorination was switched off in good time, the filtered water could be used for watering without hesitation, it said.
According to the "Drought Monitor" of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, there is an "extraordinary drought" in the administrative district of Münster, among other things, the highest of five levels. After an autumn and winter start that was far too dry in 2021, it hadn’t rained enough this spring either. In May there were strong thunderstorms with local flooding - but according to the NRW State Environment Agency, the soil, which had dried out to the depths, could not absorb the water so quickly.
