Emschergenossenschaft

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Emschergenossenschaft
logo
legal form Public corporation
purpose Wastewater treatment, securing the runoff, flood protection and water maintenance
Seat Essen , North Rhine-Westphalia
founding December 14, 1899

place Bochum
Board Ulrich Paetzel , Raimund Echterhoff, Emanuel Grün
Members 199
Employee 1,624 (permanent employees with LIPPEVERBAND)
Website www.eglv.de
Headquarters of the Emschergenossenschaft in Essen , built in 1909/10 by Wilhelm Kreis in the style of reform architecture
Landscape with a typical Emschergenossenschaft warning sign
Digestion towers of the Emschermuende sewage treatment plant

The Emschergenossenschaft , based in Essen, is a special statutory water management association and a corporation under public law for water maintenance, wastewater discharge and purification, groundwater management and regulation of mining consequences in the Emscher catchment area with around 2.2 million inhabitants between Dortmund and Duisburg .

tasks

The tasks of the Emschergenossenschaft are laid down in the "Emschergenossenschaftsgesetz" (Emscher GG) of July 14, 1904 (last amended in 2013):

  • Regulation of water runoff including balancing the water flow and securing the flood runoff of surface waters or sections of water and in their catchment areas;
  • Maintenance of surface waters or sections of water and the facilities functionally related to them;
  • Return of developed surface waters to a near-natural state;
  • Regulation of the groundwater level;
  • Avoidance, reduction, elimination and compensation of water management and related ecological changes caused or anticipated adverse changes caused by effects on the groundwater level, in particular by coal mining;
  • Wastewater disposal in accordance with the State Water Act;
  • Disposal of the waste generated during the performance of the cooperative tasks;
  • Avoidance, reduction, elimination and compensation of adverse changes in the surface water that have occurred or are expected to be caused by wastewater discharges or other causes;
  • Determination of the water management conditions, as far as the tasks of the cooperative require,
  • Procurement and provision of water for the supply of drinking water and process water as well as for the use of hydropower.

Committees and Board of Directors

The tasks are regulated in the Emschergenossenschafts- and Lippeverbandgesetz and the statutes and rules of procedure. Organs of the associations are the cooperative / association assembly, the cooperative / association council and the board of directors. The association assemblies are the highest decision-making body and are made up of representatives of the members (delegates). The Emscher Cooperative Council and the Lippe Association Council are elected by the respective association assembly. The cooperative and association council elects the board and appoints a board member as chairman.

The current board members are: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Paetzel (Chairman and Board Member Strategy and Commercial Services), Dr. Emanuel Grün (Board Member for Water Management and Technical Services) and Raimund Echterhoff (Board Member for Human Resources and Sustainability). The former heads of the association: Wilhelm Middeldorf (1905 to 1911), Dr. Heinrich Helbing (1911 to 1933), Dr. Alexander Ramshorn (1934 to 1958), Dr. Erich Knop (1958 to 1974), Dr. Gunther Annen (1974 to 1991) and Dr. Jochen Stemplewski (1992 to 2016)

In 2015 the objection procedure against notices of public corporations was reintroduced. The objection committees are partly elected by the respective association assembly, partly the members are appointed directly by the supervisory authority. The supervisory authority is the Ministry of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia responsible for water management, the Ministry for the Environment, Agriculture, Nature and Consumer Protection.

The delegate assemblies are reassembled every five years. The newly elected delegates then determine the members of the cooperative council and the association council and, in some cases, the members of the appeal committees. Multiple terms of office are permitted for all committee members.

history

Until the beginning of the industrialization of the Ruhr area from the middle of the 19th century, the Emscher was a meandering lowland river of around 109 km in length, which was dammed by many weirs on its tributaries and in the partly branched main stream . These generated the water pressure required to operate the mills and were used for fish farming. Therefore, the land on the Emscher was fertile, but settlements directly next to the river were not possible or there was a constant risk of being flooded. The entire Emscher zone was also little noticed "outer district" for the state administrations, since the administrative district boundaries were located here (corresponding to the historical boundaries between Rhineland and Westphalia) founded in 1815/1816

The mapping of the Emscher zone was only implemented between 1822 and 1835. For a long time, the Emscher had hardly any bridges or crossings; the first north-south road connection between today's large cities Recklinghausen and Herne was z. B. built in 1842. When, in the 1860s, coal mining migrated north from the Ruhr to the Emscher, which was hardly populated at that time, the problems were inevitable: As a result of the mining, areas sank above ground and swamps formed ( mountain subsidence ). The wastewater from mining and smelting works, but also from settlements, collected here and rotted: The population of the Emscher cities increased rapidly in the 19th century. In 1818, cities like Essen and Dortmund did not have 5,000 inhabitants, in 1910 Essen registered 294,653 and Dortmund 214,226 people. Since 1883, drafts and commissions have been discussed on how to remedy the drainage emergency. The amount of water pumped over from the Ruhr valley as drinking water did not reduce the problem, because the Ruhr water was also hygienically questionable and, together with the emergency drainage in 1901, led to a typhus epidemic in Gelsenkirchen , in which 350 people died. Robert Koch founded the "Hygiene Institute of the Ruhr Area" here in 1901.

The actual founding meeting of the Emscher Cooperative took place on December 14, 1899. The Emschergenossenschaft was under self-administration from the beginning, the state was not directly involved, but only had influence through legislation and building permits. The costs incurred were proportionally distributed among those who caused the wastewater or construction work, i.e. mining, trade and industry as well as cities and municipalities (as representatives of the citizens). The plan drawn up by the government master builder Wilhelm Middeldorf from 1901 "to regulate the drainage and waste water purification in the Emscher area" predicted mining-related disruptions for the next 50 years with an assumed depth of coal mining down to 1,000 m. On July 14th, 1904, the Emschergenossenschaftsgesetz was confirmed by the Prussian King Wilhelm II and later served as a model for the establishment of further water management associations .

From 1906 the Emscher from Dortmund to the Rhine was lowered, straightened and dyed. Since subsidence of up to 10 meters was expected for the natural estuary in Duisburg-Hamborn (" Alte Emscher "), the Emscher estuary was moved from Oberhausen to Duisburg-Walsum (" Kleine Emscher ") in 1906 ; In 1949 the estuary was relocated a second time to Dinslaken. With the completion of the construction work in this estuary delta in 2018, the Emscher will be relocated for a third time to Voerder urban area. The first expansion section from Herne to Duisburg was completed from 1906 to 1910, the section from Herne to Dortmund was completed in 1914. Sewage treatment plants and pumping stations were built at the same time.

The aim of the Emscher expansion was to restore a natural gradient so that the water could flow into the Rhine. For this purpose, the originally 109 km long Emscher course was freed from many "loops" or it was partially relocated parallel to the old river bed: In the Herne / Herten area, for example, the Emscher has been in the bed of its former tributary Fleuthe since 1914 , because at the same time during the first Emscher expansion The Rhine-Herne Canal was built over a total length of 46 km and partially placed in the former Emscher river bed. Today the Emscher course between the source in Holzwickede and the area where it flows into the Rhine is only 81 km long. Just 10 years after the start of construction, 5,000 hectares of land had been freed from flooding and 2,000 hectares of previously swampy land were now dry and usable. Typhus , malaria and other epidemics had almost completely disappeared. Since 1906 the Emschergenossenschaft has been rapidly expanding the network of sewage treatment plants. In 1908 around 220,000 inhabitants were already connected to cooperative sewage treatment plants, 3 years later there were already over 700,000 people and 19 systems (at that time, cleaning 1 cubic meter of water cost 0.34 pfennigs). At the beginning of the First World War , the Emschergenossenschaft had already created capacity for almost 1 million people, in 1932 2 million people were connected. The cleaning costs averaged around 20% per inhabitant compared to what is otherwise usual in major German cities. The citizens stabbed the "Emscher fuel" mixed with coal dust at the sewage sludge drying sites, as the sewage sludge had almost the same calorific value as brown coal. The increasing problems with the lack of gradient in the brooks, which was constantly recurring due to the subsidence of the terrain caused by mining, were solved in many places by pumping stations.

Often it has become economically and technically easier over time not to pump the wastewater to an on-site sewage treatment plant in a subsidence area , but to direct it to a central sewage treatment plant for several cities via the open, concrete-lined streams. By the end of the 1920s, the Emschergenossenschaft operated 30 sewage treatment plants. With the construction of the Emscher river sewage treatment plant at the mouth of the Boye in Bottrop in 1927 and the increasing number of pumping stations due to constant subsidence, the wastewater treatment shifted to a centrally organized network. At the Emscher estuary in Dinslaken, which was relocated in 1949, Europe's largest and most modern sewage treatment plant was built in the 1970s, while the old estuaries of the Emscher in Duisburg were already biologically cleaned from 1965 and 1988. With the inauguration of the new Dortmund-Deusen wastewater treatment plant in 1994 and Bottrop wastewater treatment plant in 1997, all wastewater in the catchment area is biologically treated in conjunction with the Emschermünde sewage treatment plant . There are also the tributaries of the Kleine and Alte Emscher, which are disposed of via a joint sewage treatment plant, and a hospital sewage treatment plant at Marienhospital Gelsenkirchen . The Emschergenossenschaft forms an administrative unit with the Lippeverband founded in 1926 . Together, these two associations are the largest water management association and wastewater disposal company in Germany.

The mountain subsidence has almost come to a standstill due to the northern migration of the coal mining industry. The Emschergenossenschaft can therefore "dismantle" the drainage system again, that is: step by step, the former streams are freed of wastewater, which then flows into the sewage treatment plants in underground pipes. After that, the streams can be redesigned, "renatured". The first project was started in 1982 with the Dellwiger Bach in Dortmund.

With the so-called water association decision of December 5, 2002, the Federal Constitutional Court strengthened the special organizational form of "functional self-administration" that is specific to the Emschergenossenschaft and other water associations (BVerfG, decision of December 5, 2002 - 2 BvL 5 and 6/98 -). The reasoning stated that outside of the direct state administration , in demarcated areas such as water management, special organizational forms of communal self-administration are permissible for the execution of public tasks ; especially since there is compatibility with the democratic principle of the Basic Law in Article 20 (para. 2) .

The Emschergenossenschaft in the present

The natural reconstruction of the Emscher system is the main task of the present and future. This generation project was initiated with the International Building Exhibition Emscherpark (1989–1999). By the planned and budgeted time frame 1992–2021, the entire Emscher system is to be rebuilt with € 5.38 billion, with an "initial expansion" being sought for the main Emscher run. The Emscher sewer (AKE) is a prerequisite for the Emscher to be free of wastewater and for the natural remodeling of the waters. The planning and construction of the canal, with a depth of up to 40 meters, was an engineering masterpiece. The groundbreaking ceremony for the Emscher sewer was set on September 11, 2009. The AKE is 51 kilometers long and extends from Dortmund-Deusen to Dinslaken. Due to its gradient of 1.5 per mille, it requires three pumping stations on the way west (Gelsenkirchen, Bottrop and Oberhausen). The Emschergenossenschaft is currently planning the commissioning of the entire system for the end of 2021.

The consequences of mining are irreversible, so that the need to pump - i.e. to keep the settlement areas dry - persists. These so-called perpetual costs are borne by the RAG-Stiftung . Challenges for water management arise from the signs of climate change as well as legal changes at state, federal and EU level. The long-term increase in local heavy rain events can be statistically proven by the Emschergenossenschaft, since precipitation data has been collected throughout the catchment area since it was founded. In this respect, projects and campaigns on rainwater management with the "future agreement rainwater". and European network projects such as "SIC adapt!" or dynaklim within the framework of the Klimzug network tries to develop strategies to deal with the consequences of climate change. However, this has not been able to prevent that almost every year somewhere in the catchment area, local heavy rain events result in flooding from the communal sewer system or from the technically measured volumes of retention basins being exceeded, as there can be no absolute security.

Challenges continue to arise from so-called micropollutants, which have been present in wastewater for a long time, but which are increasingly detectable thanks to continuously improved analysis methods. These include, for example, drug residues. Since 2011, the Emschergenossenschaft has been operating the world's only hospital sewage treatment plant that can use various cleaning technologies to remove a large part of the drug residues from wastewater and then discharge it into a stream.

The cooperative territory

The cooperative area comprises the above-ground catchment areas of the Emscher, the Old Emscher and the Little Emscher. Members of the cooperative (comrades) are:

  1. independent cities, cities, municipalities and
  2. Circles,
    as far as they are wholly or partially in the cooperative territory;
  3. the respective owners of the mines located wholly or partially in the cooperative territory;
  4. commercial companies and the respective owners of land and transport facilities with relevant waste water volumes.

Since their foundation, the Sesekegenossenschaft and Lippeverband have formed an administrative partnership with the Emschergenossenschaft in Essen . This cooperation made sense because many cities in the northern Ruhr area are located in both river basins, both Lippe and Emscher . The public-law form of organization aims to involve all “water users” equally in the cost-effective measures. The calculation is based on the polluted loads of the wastewater for each water user and "special interests" are assessed for services that go beyond this.

Key figures (as of December 31, 2018)

  • Members of the Emschergenossenschaft: 199
  • Catchment area: 865 km²
  • Population: approx. 2.29 million
  • Watercourses: 352 km
  • Sewers: 365 km
  • Dykes 116.92 km (of which the Rhine 4.2 km and the Emscher 60.47 km)
  • Sewage treatment plants: 5 (total capacity 4.8 million population equivalents)
  • Pumping stations: 141 (131 drainage pumping stations, 10 sewage pumping stations)
  • Share of areas drained by pumping stations in the cooperative area: 37.8%
  • Flood retention basin: 23
  • Rainwater retention basin: 29

literature

  • 100 years of the Emscher Cooperative. In: wwt . Vol. 5, 2000, p. 8 f.
  • Eva Balz, Christopher Kirchberg: Flowing borders. Wastewater policy between democracy and dictatorship. Emschergenossenschaft and Lippeverband 1930–1960 . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2020, ISBN 978-3-8375-2183-2 .
  • EH Helbing: Emschergenossenschaft and Lippeverband from 1925 to 1930 .
  • EH Helbing: 25 years of the Emschergenossenschaft 1900–1925 , self-published by the Emschergenossenschaft, 1925.
  • Rudolf Hurck: The river basin plans of the Emschergenossenschaft and Lippeverband. In: 6th symposium on river basin management at the Wupper Association, Regional Water Management Forum. Wuppertal 2003, pp. 61–65, wupperverband.de (PDF; 4.29 MB).
  • Helge Kleifeld: Karl Gerstein and the water management in the Rhineland and Westphalia. 100 years of the Emscher Cooperative. In: Rheinische Heimatpflege . Vol. 42, No. 1, 2005, ISSN  0342-1805 , pp. 1-9.
  • Ralf Peters: 100 years of water management in the area. The Emscher Cooperative 1899–1999 . Verlag Peter Pomp, Bottrop / Essen 1999, ISBN 3-89355-197-2 .

Web links

Commons : Emschergenossenschaft  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Emschergenossenschaftsgesetz
  2. ^ A b Hubert Kurowski: The Emscher. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 1993, ISBN 3-88474-045-8 .
  3. ↑ a b Communal Association of the Ruhr Area (ed.): In the beginning there was the heath. Brinck & Co. Essen, 1995.
  4. ^ Burghardt / Siepmann: Recklinghausen - Small town history. Bauer-Druck, Recklinghausen 1971, ISBN 3-921052-01-7 .
  5. ^ Homepage of the Hygiene Institute hygiene-institut.de
  6. ↑ a b c d e Emschergenossenschaft (self-published): 50 years of the Emschergenossenschaft. Essen 1957.
  7. ↑ Emschergenossenschaft (leaflet): Facts & Data, Essen as of October 2014.
  8. ↑ Portrait of the Gelsenkirchen hospital sewage treatment plant youtube.com
  9. ↑ Peter Unruh: Democracy and “co-determination” in functional self-administration - using the example of the Emschergenossenschaft. In: VerwArch . Vol. 92, 2002, pp. 531-559.
  10. ^ Joachim Becker: The principle of democracy and the participation of private individuals in the fulfillment of public tasks. On the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court "Lippeverband und Emschergenossenschaft" of December 5, 2002 . In: DÖV . 57th vol., 2004, pp. 910-915.
  11. ^ Emschergenossenschaft (Ed.): "Flood expert workshop in the Emscher area", kick-off event for the regional management of flood hazards in the Emscher area on May 25, 2009 in the archaeological museum in Herne.
  12. ↑ Rain brings blessings emscher-regen.de
  13. ↑ Project website Strategic Initiative Cluster sic-adapt.eu ( Memento from November 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Project website of the joint project DYNAKLIM dynaklim.de
  15. ↑ Better protection against floods Report on a conference of the Emschergenossenschaft 2013 derwesten.de
  16. ↑ EU cooperation project on drug residues no-pills.eu ( Memento from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  17. ↑ Emschergenossenschaft: Facts and Figures (Annual Report), Essen 2019.

Coordinates: 51 ° 26 ′ 45.5 ″  N , 7 ° 1 ′ 14.5 ″  E