Lippeverband

The Lippeverband is a public German water board (“Wasserwirtschaftsverband”) located in Dortmund (North Rhine-Westphalia/Germany) and responsible for 3.280 km² of the Lippe catchment from Lippborg down to the river Rhine with 1.4 Mio. citizens. The main tasks are wastewater discharge and treatment, flood protection, groundwater management, settlement of claims caused by hard coal mining, river restoration and protection of ecosystems. History Origins and early development The river Lippe appears as a two-tier water course: Upstream, eastward of the city of Hamm/Lippborg, the catchment is more rural. Downstream of Hamm settlements and industrial impacts characterize the situation. Preconditions for the industrialization started with the construction of the Cologne-Minden trunk line in the 1840s that connected the river Rhine settlements like Cologne with harbours and trade at the river Weser and on this route with Lippe towns, too. Moreover, this railway supported the coal and steel industry development in the whole northern Ruhr region. The hard coal mining that started in the middle of the 19th century in the Emscher catchment area developed in the following decades direction north. In the Lippe catchment area from the 1860s on first problems from mining subsidence and drainage of polluted water appeared. Villages and towns located at the Lippe and its tributary Seseke (Werl, Unna, Hamm, Bönen, Kamen, Bergkamen, Lünen and Dortmund) expanded quickly with the establishing of hard coal mines between 1856 and World War I. The industrialization caused huge water quality problems in the Lippe, its tributaries and the settlements; therefore first in 1913 the Sesekegenossenschaft and later in 1926 the Lippeverband as public water boards (“Wasserwirtschaftsverbände”) were established.