It is almost impossible to avoid at least some form of environmental impact during the construction of hydroelectric power plants. For us, reducing this impact to the lowest possible level is a matter of course, and is always an integral part of each planning and construction process. Because water as a habitat is extremely sensitive, many of our power plants are equipped with migration aids for fish, e.g. salmon ladders. However, in order to ensure even better protection of aquatic life forms we also participate in research and survey projects.
In the same way, we, as hydroelectric plant operators, also take our responsibilities for flooding prevention seriously, and invest multi-million sums for appropriate preventive measures every year. The costs of refurbishment and expansion activities for flooding prevention on the Inn barrages in recent years alone amounted to approximately 38 million Euros. Any required increasing of dike heights obviously involves some environmental impact, but we compensate for such impacts with ecological programs.

Moreover, scientific studies have shown that the plant sites frequently develop to become new habitats for numerous animal and plant species. On the whole, it has been confirmed that our measures show an overall positive effect on biodiversity - the biological variety of species.

By the way, our power plant personnel are high-power cleaners too - they fish thousands of tonnes of civilization trash and wastes from the screening equipment of our power plants and make sure it is correctly disposed of.