The Danube at Batina has fallen to minus 140 centimetres. That is a historic low for that measuring point, and in eastern Croatia the wells have started running dry one by one. People who have spent their whole lives beside the region's largest river now measure water in centimetres and carry it to the garden in buckets.

Households have not been left without drinking water - that comes through the Baranja water supply. But the wells, which in those villages were never decoration but a tool, have been left empty. And with them, so have the gardens.

„I have 40 to 50 centimetres of water because while digging we hit a little spring from the hill. My well depends on the level of the Danube. As the Danube rises, so does the water in the well,” explains Đuro Molnar, a resident of Batina.

When even the stream disappears

This year the low level of the Danube also took the Karašica stream, which has dried up completely.

„The Karašica was never this dry, it always flowed. Now it is gone, there is no water,” Molnar says.

Locals agree they cannot remember anything like it. „Never in my life has there been drought like this and a level this shallow,” notes Ivan Francuz. His neighbour Ivan Domjanović adds that both the flow of the water and the state of the Danube have changed.

The problem does not stop at the Danube. The Drava at Osijek is three metres lower than in previous years. Three metres is not a seasonal fluctuation - three metres is a new condition nobody prepared for.

Daily life reduced to one barrel

The mayor of the Draž municipality, Valentina Avdičević, confirmed that the low levels have dried out the wells drawing from surface layers. Batina has been connected to the water supply network for ten years, but well water remains the only thing keeping the gardens alive.

„Every day we fill a barrel and water by hand from it. We cannot water the whole garden, only the most important things - the peppers and tomatoes,” says Marija Domjanović.

Edita Čatalinac adds that their well runs dry more and more often. „We are getting by, as they say. Our well has been drying up for four years now, so we manage the garden however we can.”

Four years running. That is no longer a bad year, that is a trend somebody should have noticed before it came down to buckets and barrels.

The Balkans know this scene

The story of dried-up wells and watering with a bucket is not exclusive to Baranja. Every summer, somewhere in this region, somebody explains the same thing in the same words - that they cannot remember anything like it. The difference is that now it is being said by people who live beside the Danube, a river that for centuries counted as something that could not run out.

And if the Danube can fall to a historic low, what is left as a safe reserve? The question is not rhetorical for the people filling a barrel every morning.