Wiesbaden is a city of a growing world culture in the middle of the 19th century and the people were increasingly worried about supplying the citizens of Wiesbaden with drinking water of good quality and in sufficient quantity. A groundwater suitable for the drinking water supply is almost completely absent in the urban area and the hot springs, which already lured the Romans to the Rhine, are unsuitable for the drinking water supply and in 1870 people had to rely on it to direct the water for the running wells from sources or trickle galleries from the front Taunus into the city.
The first mining development of groundwater through the development of drainage galleries and flat tunnels took place in 1864. And between 1875 to 1910 four deep tunnels were driven into the Taunusquarzit and The entrance portals of Kreuzstollen and Schläferskopfstollen are located in the immediate vicinity.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the population of Wiesbaden had tripled .
Population growth has increased both the water needs of the city.
In 1870 for instance, we had 50 litres of drinking water per inhabitant per day .
In 1910 was already 120 litres per capita and they tried to find a solution for that increasing demand by expanding their tunnels but it became clear that they needed to look for additional water sources to maintain the water supply.
In 1899, a spring is constructed at Schierstein by sinking of riverside water filtered from the shore to sand filter to purify the water. But the drinking water still increases and that leads to the construction of the first waterworks in Wiesbaden in Schierstein (1904-1906) and later the waterworks and the treatment plants of Schierstein were expanded to adapt the increasing demands.
Waterworks in Wiesbaden in Schierstein (www.hessenwasser.de)
The operating company for drinking water of Wiesbaden
The safety of drinking water of the city of Wiesbaden and with the inclusion of the drinking water connection from the Hessian Ried achieved by a water company “Hessenwasser” based in Darmstadt. Hessenwasser operates 33 waterworks and extraction facilities across the entire Rhine-Main area. The supply area extends from the springs in the Vogelsberg and Spessart to the facilities in the city of Frankfurt, the extraction facilities in the Taunus and the Schierstein in Rhein waterworks to the waterworks in the Hessian Ried. By means of integrated groundwater management, a sustainable and ecological groundwater extraction is guaranteed in the groundwater works of the Hessian Ried. For the purpose of groundwater recharge and agricultural irrigation in the waterworks Biebesheim , Rhine water is treated to drinking water quality.
Hessenwasser provides around 100 million cubic meters of drinking water to ensure the supply of over 2 million people in the Rhine-Main region.
Pump hall of distribution system Haßloch
Drinking water production for Wiesbaden in the Taunus Every year around 15 million cubic meters of water are needed for the Wiesbaden drinking water supply. About one third of the water production is based on the waterworks in Schierstein, the groundwater works in the Hessian Ried and 20 extraction plants in the Vorder-Taunus. These are distributed between Georgenborn and the Wiesbaden district Auringen.
Interior view of water container Klosterbruch
Hydrogeological conditions
Various types of water production plants were set up in the Wiesbaden city forest: seepage galleries and gravel, flat tunnels and deep tunnels for the seepage galleries are long channels of brickwork with open joints through which the water can enter Curved top form an intermediate stage between Sickergalerie and Tiefstollen. Often they have been driven up to 200 meters in the slate stone at the upper end of Sickergalerien in mining construction. Typical for this are the geothermal plants in the Rabengrund, while the gravel tunnel with an earth cover of up to 60 meters can be classified between flat gravel and low gravel.
