Rodenkirchen - It is 36 meters long, 26 meters wide and twelve feet deep. After two years of construction the new mega-pumping station completed and in operation - an almost invisible protection against floods.
If you stand on the waterfront in Rodenkirchen, you have no idea the subterranean dimensions of 10-million-euro building. Nestled in the countryside, it offers protection from the masses of water to a height of 11.30 meters Cologne level.
"We have 120 pumping stations, but this is top class," said Bernd Damaske of the municipal drainage companies AöR (Steb). Pride is also the project manager Hartmut Meier create: "The ten pumps up to 8000 liters per second, 20 kilometers of cable were laid. And so, although designed by the landscape architect Dirk Melzer, that you can not see the pumping station. "
With the tons hydraulic gate, it goes under the earth, into the heart of the new plant. There, the new pumps are stationary, and ready for her first deployment.
"Cologne from 7,00 m level, the pumping station is put into operation, it will be interesting only from 9.40 meters," said Hartmut Meier. The task of the pumping station wagon (impulses and mixing water) is pumped at high tide the accumulating amount of groundwater and the flood discharge from the sewage treatment plant in the Rhine.
And if once the pumping station itself "under water" should be: A jumps to its own emergency generator automatically provides electricity. Bernd Damaske: "Here we continue pumping. No matter what happens! "
