Weiltalsperre

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Map of the planned Weiltalsperre

The Weiltalsperre was a planned project in the 1950s to 1970s to build a dam in the Weiltal . The dam was intended for an area above Rod an der Weil that is in what is now the Hochtaunuskreis in Hesse . The reservoir should have held around 20 to 25 million cubic meters of water.

background

After the Second World War , the consumption of drinking water in the Rhine-Main area grew significantly and water scarcity was a much discussed topic. The reason was initially the immigration of people displaced from East Germany as part of the flight and expulsion and of refugees from the newly established dictatorship in the GDR . In 1959, 2.5 million people lived in the Rhine-Main area, which corresponds to 55% of the population of Hesse. A further increase to 3.5 million in the following 30 years was assumed by the planners. In addition, water consumption per capita had increased due to the economic miracle . The planners anticipated a requirement of 450 million cubic meters of water per year, which significantly exceeded the existing capacities.

In Darmstadt Regional therefore 1958, a planning group water supply Rhein-Main was formed under the direction of Regierungsbaurat mandrel (the Rhein-Main-Area fell in the field of Regierungspräsidien Darmstadt and Wiesbaden, the joint working group covered the entire area ab). This developed a bundle of measures to ensure the water supply in the long term. Instead of local water extraction and distribution, group waterworks, larger extraction systems and network networks should be created.

The situation was particularly dramatic in the Taunus . In the Obertaunus district , an increase in water demand from 4.5 to 14 million cubic meters was forecast. The reason there was also the escape from the city and the associated construction of single-family houses in the countryside outside Frankfurt's borders. Due to the nature of the Taunus, local extraction could only be increased by 3 million cubic meters. Therefore, the creation of drinking water reservoirs in the Taunus was essential. Two dams were proposed for this purpose: the Wispertalsperre in Wispertal for supplying the Rheingau with an annual output of 14 million cubic meters and the Weiltalsperre for supplying the Upper and Main-Taunus districts with 33 million cubic meters of annual production.

The plans in the 1950s and 60s

The first plans for the Weiltalsperre were drawn up in 1950 by the water management office in the Wiesbaden district . It was part of the general plan for the water supply of the districts of Obertaunus, Maintaunus and Usingen .

The dam wall should be at the narrowest point of the Weiltal, about one kilometer above Rod an der Weil . The reservoir would be around five kilometers long and hold 20 to 25 million cubic meters of water. The catchment area of ​​this lake covered 60 square kilometers with an annual average rainfall of 750 to 1000 liters of rain per square meter. The lake was planned in such a way that the lowest houses in Altweilnau would still remain in the country. The area of ​​the lake was largely uninhabited: only the Erbismühle, the Mappesmühle and the Gertudishammer would be flooded.

In December 1959, Wiesbaden's district president Walter Schubert declared that the construction of the two dams was planned. The costs of 50 million  DM for the Weiltalsperre and 20 million DM for the Wispertalsperre are planned in the medium-term financial planning of the Hessian Ministry of Agriculture . The costs for the Weiltalsperre are therefore higher, since the Bundesstraße 275 has to be relocated here .

In February 1960, 20 holes were drilled to test the soil condition. In April of the same year, the district council of the Usingen district imposed a construction ban in the Weiltal between the Landstein desert and the proposed dam.

In December 1964, the city of Frankfurt am Main and the districts of Obertaunus, Maintaunus, Usingen and Oberlahn founded the company for planning the Weiltalsperre . The company commissioned Elektrizitäts-Aktiengesellschaft in Frankfurt to carry out a preliminary study. Half of the costs of 300,000 DM were borne by the State of Hesse. Frankfurt paid 75,000 DM, the Obertaunuskreis 40,000 DM, the Maintaunuskreis 28,000 DM, the Kreis Usingen 5,000 DM and the Oberlahnkreis 2,000 DM. In the course of the first half of 1965 the decision to join was confirmed by the district councils of all those involved and on August 20, 1965 the articles of association were signed signed. The forecast costs had meanwhile risen to 100 million DM.

However, the district council in Usingen combined its approval with the demand that the lake must also be used for swimming and water sports. Since this was not possible in view of the necessary water quality, the Elektrizitäts-Aktiengesellschaft suggested creating another lake north of Rod, which could then be used for tourism. Another result of the preliminary study was to build the dam further below, just above the brickworks . Here the valley was wider and the dam wall was correspondingly longer, so there was no need to relocate federal highway 275. Two large pipes were provided for the transport of the water into the Vordertaunus.

The concerns of the affected communities

From the point of view of the Weiltal communities, the construction of a Weiltalsperre led to significant restrictions without any benefit for the communities. Below the planned dam wall there was concern that the dam would break. Above the reservoir, it was primarily the establishment of the necessary water protection area . The water protection zone II, i.e. the first 100 meters around the reservoir, would have led to a ban on building, agriculture and tourism. Parts of Neuweilnau and Altweilnau were affected. Neuweilnau would have been enclosed by this water protection zone II. Strictly speaking, access to the site would no longer have been permitted. If this water protection zone II would not only encompass the lake, but also, as technically sensible, the inlets, almost the entire Weiltal would be unmanageable.

But also the water protection zone III, i.e. the entire catchment area of ​​the protected water intake , i.e. the entire upper Weiltal up to the Feldberg , led to considerable restrictions. This particularly affected Niederreifenberg . Niederreifenberg was a focus of the metalworking industry. Seven companies there worked with acids that would no longer have been permitted in water protection zone III. Accordingly, the 16 affected communities (the regional reform in Hesse , which created the large communities Schmitten and Weilrod , was still in the future) were opponents of the project. A petition from citizens of the Altweilnau community regarding the construction of the Weiltalsperre from 1964 was passed on by the state parliament to the state government for consideration.

There was also increasing criticism in politics. On April 22nd, 1966, after a controversial discussion , the association assembly of the Untermain planning community accepted a proposal that drastically curtailed the possibilities of the 16 municipalities to designate building land. Instead of 3.9 square kilometers, only 1.2 square kilometers were permitted. In the opinion of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , this meant the almost complete loss of their planning authority for the affected communities . The Hessian state had already rejected financial compensation from state funds for the affected communities. On May 4, 1966, a motion by the opposition followed CDU Hesse in Hesse state parliament , the state government should report on the biennial report of Lahmeyer.

The end of planning

A major inquiry from the CDU parliamentary group on October 30, 1967 about the water supply in Hesse included the question of whether the state government would stick to the planning for the Weiltalsperre. The government was still sticking to the project. But in July 1968, Minister Tassilo Tröscher announced that the Weiltalsperre should not be built "temporarily". The protests of the Weiltal communities were not decisive. Water extraction through large extraction systems was now seen as the cheaper solution for water supply. The background to this was, on the one hand, the continued rise in costs for the reservoir, which the press put up to 150 million DM, but above all the significantly improved river water quality, which made it easier to obtain drinking water by trickling river water . In addition, at a press conference on March 13, 1969, the reason given was that the soil in the Weiltal was unsuitable. The existing former ore tunnels led to the risk of contamination of the water with copper and lead .

The end of the planning led to considerable investments in wastewater disposal by the communities in the Weiltal. In the 1960s, in anticipation of a central group sewage treatment plant, the sewage network was not expanded. Now the surface water could be led directly into the Weil. A new sewer network was built for the wastewater from 1970, which cost DM 5.8 million in Oberreifenberg and DM 7 million in Niederreifenberg.

The planning of the 1970s

The idea of ​​a reservoir in the Weiltal was taken up again in the 1970s. However, no longer as a water reservoir, but as a tourist attraction. In 1973 the community of Weilrod proposed the construction of a dam at the bottleneck of the Weiltal originally intended for this purpose. The reservoir should reach as far as the Mappesmühle and serve water sports, whereby no motor boats should be permitted. The dam should be kept low so that state road  3025 does not have to be relocated. The topography would still create a large lake. In 1977, the Hochtaunuskreis committee decided to acquire and make available the 15 hectares of the future seabed as part of the ongoing land consolidation process. The community of Weilrod applied to the state for support for the cost of the dams and earthworks. The implementation failed again due to the adverse soil conditions. After the lake was not established within ten years, the land, for which the district had paid DM 140,000, contractually reverted to it. Instead of the lake, the Weilrod community was now planning to set up a wetland biotope. Due to a lack of financial resources, this project could not be implemented either.

literature

  • Harald Konopatzki: A look at Rod am See; in: Taunus-Zeitung, from December 30, 2014, p. 17

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Drinking water storage in the Taunus. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 6, 1959, p. 18.
  2. ↑ a b Preparatory work for the planned Weiltalsperre. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 13, 1960, p. 54.
  3. ↑ Drinking water reservoirs are being built. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 12, 1959, p. 16.
  4. ↑ Usingen district imposes building ban. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 26, 1960, p. 13.
  5. ↑ One step closer to the dam. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 10, 1964, p. 24.
  6. ^ Society for the construction of the Weiltalsperre. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 21, 1965, p. 57.
  7. ↑ Weiltalsperre will be more expensive. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 29, 1965, p. 34.
  8. ↑ Usingen sets conditions. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 11, 1965, p. 24.
  9. ^ Concern about Frankfurt. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 23, 1965, p. 13.
  10. ↑ The Weiltal before the great flood. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 3, 1966, p. 27.
  11. ↑ Petition point no. 555V ... regarding the construction of a Weiltalsperre ... , in petition no. 145 : Printed matter of the Hessian state parliament, section II, from June 16, 1964 (PDF; 185 KB), p. 2
  12. ↑ Spatial planning also costs money. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 6, 1965, p. 40.
  13. ↑ application in 1804 of Deputies Josef Wittwer , Georg Lindner and Rudolf Kurtz and faction concerning the projected drinking water reservoir in Weiltal , of 4 May 1966 on starweb.hessen.de (PDF; 29.5 KB)
  14. ↑ Major Question No. 811 by the CDU parliamentary group to the Hessian state government regarding supra-regional water supply in Hesse , dated October 30, 1967; in: Printed matter of the Hessian State Parliament, from November 14, 1967 (PDF; 43 KB)
  15. ↑ Take a deep breath in the Usingen district. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 11, 1968, p. 20.
  16. ↑ No dams on Weil and Wisper. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 14, 1969
  17. ↑ At the interface between town and country. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 12, 1970, p. 49.
  18. ↑ The reservoir is supposed to decorate the Weiltal. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 19, 1973, p. 49.
  19. ↑ Reservoir costs one and a half million. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 14, 1977, p. 26.
  20. ↑ All that remains of the dam is a wetland biotope. But even for that there is not enough money. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 20, 1987, p. 26.

Coordinates: 50 ° 19 ′ 17 ″  N , 8 ° 24 ′ 52 ″  E