Children play along the shoreline's new beaches.Īs elsewhere along the Danube – and, indeed, across much of Europe this summer – emergency dredging teams have been called in to deepen the riverway to break the cargo jam.

Locals are collecting the scant rainwater to use for household purposes in order to save potable water from the Danube for drinking.

With the Danube flowing at less than half its usual summer volume, dozens of cargo barges lie motionless in Zimnicea's harbor, waiting for a turn to use the only channel deep enough for passage. Never in living memory has the river run so low, with large areas of mud-cracked river bottom exposed along Zimnicea's shorelines, the dead molluscs evidence of the devastating toll on riverine life. Along the Danube River, which snakes its way for 1,800 miles (2,898km) from the Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea in Romania, scores of towns – such as the small Romanian port of Zimnicea on the Bulgarian border – depend on the waterway for their livelihood.īut this summer's epic drought and historic high temperatures, now in a fifth gruelling month, have depleted the once-mighty Danube, upending everything that Zimnicea's residents – port workers, farmers, the shipping industry, anglers, restaurant owners, and families – had for generations counted on to sustain themselves.

Dredge knock up 500