Harzwasserwerke

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• Whitefish Droste, (Speaker) Managing Director
• Günter Wolters, Managing Director

Harzwasserwerke GmbH ( HWW ) is a Lower Saxon water utilities and dam operators with the main tasks of drinking water supply, power generation, flood protection and maintenance of the Upper Harz Water Regale. In six built 1930-1969 reservoirs of the Lower Saxon part of the resin water is stored, processed to drinking water in three waterworks and distributed via a pipe system in large parts of Lower Saxony. The system is complemented by four placed in the North German Plain groundwater works. With a flow rate of currently 84 million m³ per year, they are the largest water utility in Lower Saxony.

History

The establishment of the Harzwasserwerke took place in 1928 under the sign of some floods that have caused a typhus epidemic in the Harz mountains. At the time, she led the designation Harzwasserwerke the province of Hannover. The first building is the Söse reservoir lake in 1931 put into operation. From the local waterworks an almost 200 km long steel pipe with a nominal diameter (DN) of 450 to 800 mm was moved to Bremen and supplied parts of the city of Bremen with drinking water. Also in the 1930s, the Odertalsperre was built, however, is only for flood control and power generation. 1944 Eckertalsperre was completed, which supplies mainly the city of Wolfsburg on a nearly 80 -km-long line. In 1956 the completion of the Okertalsperre that represents the most spectacular structure of Harzwasserwerke with its impressive arch dam. The Innerstetalsperre (completed in 1966) and the Grane (1969 ) are the most recent dam constructions.

By means of an early 1970s built the tunnel system can be supplied from the wheel and from the Okertalsperre free gradient of Granetalsperre water. In addition, in the early 1980s a pumping line was created, leads over the water from the Innerstetalsperre in the Grane. Thus, large amounts can be collected and stored in the potential drinking water Granetalsperre, from where it is then processed and routed through another conduit system in the direction of Brunswick and Hanover. 1979, a further line was laid with the pipe diameter 800-900 mm from the Söse reservoir lake up to Göttingen.

The groundwater works Schneeren (1960), Ristedt (1963 ), Ramlingen (1964) and Liebenau (1977 ) supplement the drinking water supply and take over the supply primarily in the northwest of the supply area.

1991, the Harzwasserwerke committed in a contract with her ​​former owner, the State of Lower Saxony, to take over the assets of the cultural monument Upper Harz Water Regale, to operate and maintain. This particular task in the field of Erhaltes of industrial monuments costing the Harzwasserwerke an annual seven -figure sum, which must be generated by the sale of drinking water.

Privatization

After the founding of the state of Lower Saxony in 1946, the Harzwasserwerke were designated " Harzwasserwerke of Lower Saxony " and formed a public institution with the sole owners of Lower Saxony. In 1996, the country under the then Prime Minister Gerhard Schröder privatization through and sold the facility for DM 220 million to a consortium of energy suppliers and consumers of Harzwasserwerke. Since then reads the name " Harzwasserwerke GmbH".

The constellation that more than half of the owners are also a customer of the HWW the same time, it makes the resin water works not simple: as customers low water prices are expected and as the owner of high returns. These two expectations are contradictory and can be difficult to fulfill simultaneously.

Others

95 % of revenues achieve the HWW with the sale of drinking water, which is not sold to the end customer, but always only as far as the city limits to the active -site utilities. The largest customers are now Stadtwerke Braunschweig, Göttingen, Bremen, Hannover and Hildesheim. Customers are also many smaller municipalities and water boards that are in the vicinity of the pipeline system.

5 % of sales are achieved through the generation of electricity. In all dams are hydropower plants. Moreover, in some pipelines for drinking water supply are turbines that convert the differential between the resin reservoirs and consumers in the Harz mountains and the North German Plain into electricity.

Between 1969 and 1993, the Harzwasserwerke by Martin Schmidt were conducted so that the crucial years of growth significantly influenced. This researched and documented extensively in his last years in the profession, and to his retirement in the Upper Harz Water Regale, laying an important scientific foundation for future UNESCO World Heritage recognition of this historic hydraulic structures.