Lech Canal

This article deals with the Lech Canal between Gersthofen and Meitingen, for other Lech canals see Lech and Wertach canals .

Lech Canal LEW factory canal
Lech Canal near Meitingen
Data
location	Bavaria   district of Augsburg
River system	Danube
Drain over	Lech  → Danube  → Black Sea
Diversion	at the Gersthofen weir to the left from the Lech 48 ° 25 '3 "  N , 10 ° 53' 19"  E
Source height	457  m above sea level NHN
Rewind	near Meitingen - Ostendorf from the left in the Lech coordinates: 48 ° 34 '32 "  N , 10 ° 52' 11"  E 48 ° 34 '32 "  N , 10 ° 52' 11"  E
Mouth height	less than  425  m above sea level NHN
Height difference	32 m
Bottom slope	approx. 1.8 ‰
length	approx. 18 km
Medium-sized cities	Gersthofen
Communities	Langweid am Lech , Meitingen

The Lech Canal is a non-navigable left side canal of the Lech . It branches off from this at Gersthofen and flows back into the river after the Gersthofen , Langweid and Meitingen hydropower plants . The canal was built for electricity generation and flood protection . It is around 18 km long and 28 m wide and is spanned by seven traffic bridges.

history

As early as the middle of the 19th century, the Lech was diked in this section for flood protection, whereby the river bed was restricted from a flood width of two kilometers to about 80 meters.

In 1898, a further reconstruction of the river bed began near Gersthofen with the initially three kilometer long Lech Canal for the construction of a power plant. The combination of a weir and hydropower plant in the river, which is common today, was not yet technically controllable at the time. At the Gersthofer weir at the height of today's Augsburg garbage dump, a large part of the river water was directed into the first section of the canal, at the end of which in 1901 the first large hydroelectric power plant on the Lech went into operation, the Gersthofen power plant. It was erected as an elongated bare brick building with pilasters , arched windows and white dividing elements across the canal; a two-storey building with a curved hipped roof was integrated into the eastern section. It was built by Frankfurter Elektrizitäts-AG formerly W. Lahmeyer & Co. at the suggestion of Frankfurter Farbwerke Hoechst AG vorm. Meister, Lucius & Brüning , who started their new Gersthofen plant in parallel in 1900 . After it has been diverted from the Lech, the canal has a gravel trap, which is regularly dredged to prevent the canal from clogging. A lake, which was later filled in again, was dug above the barrage to ensure water buffering. After backfilling, the area was used to double the area of ​​the chemical plant.

After the three-phase current transmission Lauffen – Frankfurt was the first to achieve a long-term energy supply over a long distance, the Gersthofer power plant began to electrify the region up to Lechhausen, for example . Two years later, Lech-Elektrizitätswerke AG (LEW) was founded. In 1911, a steam power plant was completed at the hydroelectric power plant on the left side of the canal, which was fired first with coal and later with heating oil in order to be able to guarantee reliable electricity production even when the water level was low or when there was ice. The two-aisled hall was designed to match and expanded in 1941.

The Gersthofer weir as well as the Gersthofer barrage received ship passages and a two-stage lock on instructions from the Bavarian government to make the canal navigable, but these were built over in 1907 and never used.

The region's electricity demand rose rapidly in the years that followed. Therefore, the LEW increased to 1907 at Langweid with the extension of the channel as a next step, the channel power plant Langweid in operation. The power plant was erected as an elongated structure across the canal and structured by pilasters, arched windows and white decorative elements. Two-story, pavilion-like hipped roof buildings were erected at the ends. In 1938 there was an expansion on the eastern side. This dam also had a sluice for the rafting operations on the Lech, which was still in existence until then, as well as a possible later shipping.

In 1922 the third run-of-river power plant was built near Meitingen . The hipped roof building is again across the canal and is decorated with pilaster strips and mezzanine . With this expansion, the Lech Canal, with its dykes up to eight meters high directly in front of the power plants , was given its current length of around 18 kilometers and, together with the Lech, enclosed a strip of land that was less than 100 meters wide up to the Langweid power plant and then up to 500 meters wide. An extension of the canal as far as the Danube, planned in 1940, did not take place; four pen power plants with weirs were built in this section in the 1950s .

Originally, only Francis turbines were installed in the three power plants on the Lech Canal, each with 125 m³ / s of water . Due to technical developments, Kaplan turbines with better efficiencies were installed later during extensions and renovations in Langweid and Gersthofen (1960) . Francis turbines only run in Meitingen.

Between 1989 and 1993 the LEW also renewed the headwater relief systems (weir systems) of the three power plants. With a new coating of the Lech canal bed, the seepage losses into the groundwater of the canal, which is partially above the ambient level, were reduced and the flow losses in the canal bed were reduced. Together with the machine renewal in Langweid, the expansion capacity of all three power plants could be increased by more than 1000 kW. In Gersthofen, an average of 67.4 GWh / a is generated from a 9.5 m drop, in Langweid from 7.2 m 48.9 GWh / a and in Meitingen from 12.5 m 77.2 GWh / a.

The buildings of all three power plants were placed under monument protection until 2014 .

• 

  Gersthofer weir

• 

  Langweid power plant

• 

  Meitingen power plant

environment

The construction of the Lech Canal resulted in the drainage of the Lech side arms and a strong reduction in the water level in the now only 80 meter wide Lech bed on the section between Gersthofen and Meitingen, which created a wild river landscape in terms of fauna and flora.

As part of the license extension, various conditions were implemented from the mid-1990s. When the remaining water volume increased to 2000 liters per second in the Lech mother bed directly behind the Gersthofer weir, which is only exceeded on 90 days per year, a fish ladder was built as a pool pass at the weir to allow fish to migrate. Furthermore, with the help of a culvert 1.5 kilometers below the weir, water has been passed from the Lech Canal under the Lech since 1995 to the newly created or reactivated floodplains east of Gersthofen, Chardonnay and Branntweinbach, via a spring pot with 1000 liters of water per second to supply. In Meitingen, an old Lech flood channel from the canal to the Lech was redesigned as a Mädlelech, the mouth of which into the Lech was made fishable in 2009.

tourism

The Lech Museum Bavaria is located in the Langweid power plant , in which both the barrage and the entire Lech with its natural environment and history are presented.

The cycle paths of the Via Claudia Augusta and Romantic Road tourist routes run from the mouth of the canal or Langweid to Gersthofen on the strip of land between the river and the canal.

In the Lechauen North landscape protection area with its artificially irrigated floodplains and Lechheide strips, the jungle path educational trail east of Gersthofen was renewed in 2016 .

Web links

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

• Course of the Lech Canal on the BayernAtlas

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Map entry in the upper water of the Gersthofen power plant on: BayernAtlas of the Bavarian State Government ( information )
2. ↑ Map entry in the underwater of the Meitingen power plant, 3.3 km before the return, on: BayernAtlas of the Bavarian State Government ( information )
3. ↑ Measured on: BayernAtlas of the Bavarian State Government ( notes )
4. ↑ Description of the Lechauen nature trail
5. ↑ Gersthofen monument list. BLfD, accessed on May 28, 2014 . 
6. ↑ Lech Museum. (PDF; 508 KB) Retrieved September 3, 2018 . 
7. ↑ Langweid list of monuments. BLfD, accessed on May 28, 2014 . 
8. ^ Meitingen list of monuments. BLfD, accessed on May 28, 2014 . 
9. ↑ BEW power plants on the Lech Canal. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 30, 2013 ; Retrieved September 21, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ Awakened to new life: The Brandtweinbach. Retrieved February 26, 2009 . 
11. ↑ Ökoplan - Environmental and landscape planning - Lechkanal Gersthofen - Meitingen. Archived from the original on March 18, 2008 ; Retrieved February 26, 2009 . 
12. ↑ “Poor dog” or return to the original Lech? Retrieved March 19, 2014 . 
13. ↑ Current should lure fish into the Lech. Retrieved February 26, 2009 . 
14. ↑ Lechauen North Jungle Trail