A burst water main caused massive restrictions to the water supply in large parts of Berlin, Germany on the night of Wednesday, April 30. This incident once again highlights the ailing infrastructure in the German capital and the impact of decades of cutbacks by every government of that state.

As confirmed by Berliner Wasserbetriebe, the city water company, the entire northeast of Berlin had no water. At around midnight, a main burst at Platz der Vereinten Nationen in the Friedrichshain district. This led to a large drop in pressure in the eastern half of the city. The districts of Mitte, Friedrichshain, Lichtenberg, Prenzlauer Berg, Pankow, Weißensee, Hellersdorf, Kaulsdorf and Marzahn were affected. It was not until the early hours of the morning that the water supply was largely restored.

The surrounding streets were closed to traffic for hours due to flooding. According to the police, a main traffic artery will have to remain fully closed for several months until the completion of repair work.

According to the water company, the cause of the bursting of an 80 cm (32 inch) water main is clearly the age of the pipe, which in this case is 101 years old.

Such incidents are by no means rare. It was only on New Year’s Eve that one of the main drinking water mains leading from the Tegel waterworks to the city centre burst in the district of Wedding. Large quantities of water flooded the street, and as a result, hundreds of thousands of households in several districts were without water for hours.

According to the water company, on average there are around 500 burst water pipes in Berlin every year. The number is expected to rise in the coming years as more and more pipes reach a critical age and remain inadequately repaired. According to the water companies, the main and supply pipes in the approximately 19,000-kilometer network are on average nearly 60 years old.

These are just the latest incidents clearly showing how dilapidated the public infrastructure in the German capital is. For example, 120 of the 800 or so bridges in Berlin will have to be rebuilt in the next 10 years because they are no longer considered sufficiently stable. The so-called Hennigsdorf pre-stressed steel (Henningsdorfer Spannstahl) was used for around 70 of these bridges. This was also used to build the Carola Bridge in the city of Dresden, which suddenly collapsed last September.

The situation is just as bad for the roads and rails of the public transport system, not to mention schools and public buildings, some of which have been allowed to decay.

The Reinhardswald elementary school in the Kreuzberg district has been falling into disrepair for decades. Pupils and teachers have their lessons surrounded by crumbling walls with inadequate fire protection and even exposed asbestos. The condition is now so alarming that inspectors declared the school can only be operated until 2028.

According to the Senate administration’s current plans, the school will then move to the building of the nearby Aziz Nesin elementary school. However, this would itself only be usable for a short time because it also has considerable structural defects.

At least €108 billion would be needed over the next 10 years to renovate and modernize Berlin’s public infrastructure, according to a study recently presented in Berlin by the Berlin-Brandenburg business associations, Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB) and the East German Banking Association. According to the study, this sum is needed to bring roads, railways, bridges, schools, universities, water and heating networks and much more up to date.

According to the report, €48 billion are needed for public buildings, €17 billion for local transport, €13 billion for universities, schools and daycare centers and €11 billion for state-owned water, energy and heating networks.

Deterioration of public infrastructure is the result of decades of austerity policies pursued by all establishment parties.

From 2002 to 2011, the Social Democrats (SPD) and the PDS, the predecessor of the current Left Party, pushed through a radical austerity policy that resulted in the destruction of thousands of public sector jobs. Public institutions that were not closed had their funding drastically cut.

This continued under the subsequent coalition government of the SPD and the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) as well as from 2016 onward under the alliance of the SPD, Greens and Left Party. At the beginning of 2022, the state government adopted a double budget for 2022 and 2023, which reduced the budget from more than €40 billion to €35.7 billion. Funding cuts primarily hit the school system.

Against the backdrop of Germany’s biggest rearmament since National Socialism (Nazis), the current state government of the CDU and SPD is taking the budget cuts to the extreme.

At least €660 million will be cut alone from the areas of environment and transport. This affects urgent construction projects throughout the city. In total, this austerity package amounts to €3 billion in budget cuts for this year.

Now that the first cuts are having an impact, the Senate is trying for more. A further €39 million cut for education, youth and family went into effect in April. This cut is in addition to the €370 million already announced in the education sector last December.

The coalition parties now want to use these budget cuts as a means to hand over public tasks to public companies on a large scale. Stefan Brandt, board member of the state-owned investment bank IBB, appealed to the state government to collect funds from private investors and secure them publicly.

The government’s coalition agreement mentions that the state government is to implement various projects in so-called public-private partnerships (PPP). This means that public tasks are handed over to private enterprises, which can skim off the profits without any entrepreneurial risk. In the event of additional expenses or a possible failure of the project, the public sector assumes the costs.

All parties unreservedly support this outsourcing of public functions. In Berlin, in particular, the SPD and the Left Party already implemented numerous projects of this kind. Most recently, in 2023, the SPD-Left-Green Senate decided to implement the construction of a children’s hospital at the flagship Charité medical center as a PPP.

In March, the CDU invited representatives from the private construction company Max Bögl to the transport committee of the House of Representatives as part of a hearing on infrastructure and bridge safety to give a presentation on the construction of “modular bridges.”

While more and more money in Germany is being spent on armaments and war preparations, the basic needs of the vast majority of the population are being completely ignored. Secure infrastructure, adequate housing, quality education and healthcare are considered unaffordable.

For this reason, all parties support the rearmament of state security forces in order to suppress any opposition to these policies. It is no coincidence that the budget for the police and security authorities is the only one in the Berlin state budget that has not been cut, but increased.