Wuppertal drinking water supply
The drinking water in Wuppertal comes from three sources, the development of which is due to historical factors. Even today, the supply network has structures from the time before the unification of the major cities, towns and communities Elberfeld , Barmen , Cronenberg , Ronsdorf , Beyenburg , Vohwinkel , Sonnborn and Langerfeld in 1929 to form the city of Wuppertal .
history
In the 19th century the Wupper region experienced an enormous industrial boom, which resulted in a strong increase in population. In the mid-1880s, the two neighboring cities of Elberfeld and Barmen each had more than 100,000 inhabitants and thus grew into important industrial and large cities. The supply of gas, electricity and drinking water could not keep pace with the rapid development for a long time and poor hygienic conditions, especially in the working-class areas, were the result.
The Wupper as a supplier of drinking water failed because the river was too heavily polluted by the many discharges from the textile and chemical industry and by faeces to be able to gain bank filtrates . The cities and municipalities therefore considered other concepts to ensure a reliable drinking water supply.
Elberfeld (until 1929)
The Elberfeld municipal waterworks went into operation in October 1879. However, it was not located in its own urban area, but in Benrath , a current district of Düsseldorf . The water of the Rhine was obtained , which seeped away in the bank area and was collected in wells . The seepage acted as a filter and freed the polluted water of the stream from pollution.
According to the initial plans from 1869, the filtrate from the banks of the Rhine was to be pumped via Hilden and Haan to a water reservoir in the “ Polnische Mütze” corridor and from there on to Elberfeld. A water tank on the Grünewalder Berg street on the Mount of Olives was then supposed to supply the lower-lying districts of Elberfeld and Barmens. Barmen initially intended to participate in the project, but did not want to bear the geological additional costs for the expansion of the pipe network into his own urban area and finally said goodbye to the project.
Therefore, the Elberfeld city council decided on October 31, 1876 to go it alone and purchased a 3.5 hectare site in a loop of the Rhine in Benrath. The wells were dug in 1877 and a 1,100 hp steam engine was built for the pumping station, which helped to overcome the 180 meter difference in altitude to the Bolthausen ⊙ water reservoir in Vohwinkel. Vohwinkel and Sonnborn also benefited from the 17 kilometer long pipeline, which was operational from April 19, 1879. On October 15, 1879, the ceremonial inauguration by Mayor Adolf Hermann Jaeger took place.
As the demand for water grew steadily, the water pipe soon reached its capacity limit. A second pipeline was laid between 1893 and 1896 and the number of Benrath fountains increased to nine. The capacities were now sufficient to also supply the Hahnerberg district of Cronenberg , where a separate water tower was built in 1892 . In addition, parts of Gräfrath , Neviges , Haan, Hilden and Benrath were also supplied.
In order to still be able to serve peak consumption, a contract was signed with Barmen around 1900 to allow water to flow in from the two Barmer dams . Between 1926 and 1931 the Benrath waterworks was modernized and expanded. Among other things, the steam engine was replaced by electric pumps and the wells were expanded to 22. The Elberfeld waterworks in Benrath is still in operation today and an important pillar of the Wuppertal drinking water supply.
The water tower at the Pfaffenhaus was built as a water reservoir in 1927 , see main article Atadösken .
Barmen (until 1929)
After Barmen had left the Benrath project, it pursued its own concept; the purchase of Ruhr bank filtrate. Therefore, in 1883, the Volmarstein community waterworks near Wetter an der Ruhr , also known as the Barmer waterworks , was built. In addition to the local supply of the municipality of Volmarstein , the Ruhr bank filtrate obtained from seven deep wells was pumped into pipes with a diameter of 50 centimeters as far as the old Hatzfeld water tower in Barmen . Another water tank initially filled with Ruhr water to supply the districts of Rott , Sedansberg and Wichlinghausen is located at Mallack ⊙ . With a volume of 5,700 cubic meters, it is one of the larger ones in the city and consists of two chambers with plastered brick walls and a vaulted ceiling resting on pillars. It has been filled with reservoir water since 1982.
A small waterworks was put into operation in 1883 on the upper Grillparzerweg and a pumping station pumped the water up to the Lichtscheider water tower from there .
In addition, two reservoirs were created to further supply, 1898-1900 built Barmer dam between Beyenburg and Lennep (now Herbringhausen Dam) and the built 1908-1912 Kerspe dam on the border of Halver , Kierspe and Wipperfuerth . Two pipe tunnels connected the two dams, the raw water of which was treated in the Herbringhauser waterworks at the foot of the dam of the Upper Herbringhauser dam.
Cronenberg (until 1929)
The city Cronenberg had in the 19th century on Burgholzbach own water plant with pumping station ⊙ whose two pumps with 15 hp water from five wells by the stream to the nearby, opened on October 26, 1888 Water Tower New House ⊙ highly promoted. At that time, the Cronenberger pipe network was 19,200 meters long and extended to the more remote districts such as Hintersudberg . On February 26, 1966, the water tower was taken off the pipeline network and laid down in June 1966. The pumping station, which was set up at the same time as a replacement for the water tower, was replaced in 1979 by a three-chamber water tank, which has since been filled by the Schwarzer Weg pumping station ⊙ and the Lichtscheider water tower.
In Hahnerberg ⊙ , the 35 meter high Hahnerberg water tower was built from red bricks from 1890 to 1891 , which had a capacity of 120 cubic meters and was supplied with Elberfeld water via a pumping station at today's Klever Platz . The tower was officially blown up on October 4th, 1939 due to its deterioration. Unofficially, the tower had to give way because the National Socialist rulers wanted to disable the tower as a clearly recognizable landmark for air attacks . The tower played a short episode in the Kapp Putsch in 1920 , when a machine gun post stationed on it shot at a train of 1,000 workers and fatally injured nine people.
Ronsdorf (until 1929)
The town Ronsdorf built to supply drinking water in 1898 after plans of the Aachener Professor Otto Intze the Ronsdorf dam whose water to Ronsdorfer water tower ⊙ was pumped up. The water tower, which was built from 1902 to 1903 near the restaurant "Die Wolfskuhle " near today's Parkstrasse, was 346 meters above sea level and thus at the highest point in the town. During the Second World War it suffered severe damage and had to be demolished. From 1954 the Ronsdorf dam was no longer used as a drinking water dam.
Vohwinkel
The Vohwinkler water supply, fed with the Elberfeld water, was guaranteed from the 1930s by the water tower on the Roßkamper Höhe ⊙ . The tower is still in function today, but only as a location for speed-controlled pumps which guarantee the water pressure. The actual water tank, which is located in the upper part of the tower, was taken out of service. In Bolthausen there was also the central water storage (underground tank ) of the Benrath waterworks, which was decommissioned in 2008.
Langerfeld (until 1929)
Until the end of the 19th century, the village of Langerfeld and the surrounding courtyards were supplied with water from wells and public fountains . In 1898 a waterworks with a pumping station was built in Dahl an der Schwelme and a water tank was built on the Hedtberg , which was destroyed by bombs in 1945. The water in the Schwelme was at times of such poor quality and also insufficient that the Dahl waterworks was abandoned only a few years later. From 1902 to 1904 the Ennepetalsperre was built, from which Langerfeld as part of the Schwelm district should also be supplied.
From 1905 Langerfeld, which had contributed financially to the construction of the dam, now obtained drinking water from the hydraulic structure. In the same year Langerfeld built an elevated tank on the Ehrenberg ⊙ , from which the southern districts were supplied together with the water tank on the Hedtberg ⊙ . The northern districts were from the water tank Hottenstein ⊙ supplied with water of Barmer waterworks.
The water tank on the Ehrenberg was used until 1979. Today the bunker-like building serves as an extravagant residential building. The water reservoir on the Hedtberg was rebuilt in 1979 and has since replaced all other Langerfeld water reservoirs.
Wuppertal (from 1929)
In 1929, Wuppertal was re-founded as an amalgamation of the major cities, towns and communities Elberfeld , Barmen , Cronenberg , Ronsdorf , Beyenburg , Vohwinkel , Sonnborn and Langerfeld . The water supply infrastructure, which was previously only poorly networked , could now also be combined.
In the Second World War, the Elberfeld waterworks in Benrath was spared, but the pipelines to the Bolthausen water reservoir were badly damaged. After the end of the war, the plant was still up for grabs because industrial plants wanted to settle there. The Wuppertaler Stadtwerke AG , founded on July 1, 1947, was able to avert these plans through compensatory payments and the plant was retained. With its extension on the left bank of the Rhine, Auf dem Grind from 1952 to 1954, which is connected to the old plant by a 430 meter long culvert under the Rhine, it is still a main component of the Wuppertal drinking water supply. In order to improve the quality of the filtrate from the banks of the Rhine, a treatment plant was built in 1963 and an activated carbon filter with a water softening plant in 1976 in Benrath.
At the end of the 1950s, the city of Wuppertal agreed with the Wupperverband to build the Dhünntalsperre (storage volume 7.5 million m³), as there were bottlenecks in the summer months. This dam was expanded from 1975 to 1986 to form the Great Dhünntalsperre (storage volume 81 million m³). The water is from a pumping station in Dabringhausen and the pumping station 3 on Morsbachtalstr. to a group consisting of six chambers, and a total of 60,000 cubic meter water container under the sports field Oberbergische road ⊙ pumped.
The old water tower Lichtscheid ⊙ , a brick building on the highest point in Wuppertal ( Lichtscheid ), was blown up on December 2nd, 1977 and replaced by the new Lichtscheider water tower ⊙ just a few hundred meters further. The optically identical Wassertebreck ⊙ water tower was built in the north-east of Wuppertal on the border with Sprockhövel .
The purchase of Ruhr bank filtrate was stopped in 1982, the Barmer waterworks was assigned to the local supplier Gevelsberger AVU . At the same time, a replacement of the old Hatzfeld water tower was considered. In 1983 and 1984, the new Hatzfeld water tower ⊙ was built just a few meters next to the old water tower .
facts and figures
Today a third of the drinking water in Wuppertal (8.7 million m³) comes from the waterworks in Benrath. The hardness of the water drawn from there is II. Another twelve million cubic meters of drinking water come from the Great Dhünntalsperre via the Dabringhausen waterworks. Wuppertal draws the remaining six million cubic meters from the Upper Herbringhauser Dam and the Kerspe Dam and is treated at the Herbringhauser Dam waterworks. The dam water has a degree of hardness I. Depending on the district, the mixing ratio and thus the degree of hardness of the three main sources of drinking water is different. The proportion of Rhine bank filtrate is higher in the west of the city due to the closer location of the waterworks in Benrath. In total, the water supply network covers a length of 1200 kilometers.
Water storage in use
- Water tower Pfaffenhaus , ("Atadösken")
- Lichtscheid water tower
- Hatzfeld water tower
- Nützenberg water tank
- Hedtberg water tank
- Laaken water reservoir
- Tesche water container
- Water reservoir at the Oberbergische Strasse sports field
- Mallack water tank
- Neuenhaus water tank
- Beyenburg water tank
- Kiesberg water tank
Downed water towers
- Old Lichtscheider water tower
- Dönberger water tower
- Ronsdorf water tower
- Hahnerberg water tower
- Neuenhaus water tower ("Drei-Kaiser-Wasserturm")
- Tesche water tower
- Water tower at Kopernikusstrasse Barmen
Water tank out of order
- Old Hatzfelder water tower
- Roßkamper Höhe water tower
- Hottenstein water tank
- Ehrenberg water reservoir
- Bolthausen water tank
- Water tank forest road
- Eichenhofer Weg water reservoir
- Water tower next bar
- Jumping water tank
Former railway water towers
- Water tower of the Steinbeck depot
- Water tower of the Mirker Betriebswerk
- Water tower of the Vohwinkler train station
- Wichlinghausen freight station water tower (Am Diek)
Web links
- Festschrift 125 years of the Benrath waterworks
- The Barmer waterworks on the industrial heritage route
- Langerfeld's water supply
Individual evidence
- ↑ Article in the Westdeutsche Zeitung of July 17, 2012 ( online )