Ecker Dam

Ecker Dam
Ecker Dam
	Dam wall
	Location of Ecker Dam in Germany
Country	Germany
Location	Lower Saxony/Saxony-Anhalt
Coordinates	51°50′08″N10°35′15″E / 51.83556°N 10.58750°E Coordinates: 51°50′08″N10°35′15″E / 51.83556°N 10.58750°E
Construction began	1939
Opening date	1942
Dam and spillways
Type of dam	Gravity dam
Impounds	Ecker
Height	65 m (213 ft)
Length	235 m (771 ft)
Width (crest)	2.2 m (7 ft)
Dam volume	168,000 m3 (5,900,000 cu ft)
Reservoir
Total capacity	13,270,000 m3 (469,000,000 cu ft)
Catchment area	19 km2 (7 sq mi)
Surface area	68 ha (1 km2)
Power Station
Operator(s)	Harzwasserwerke
Type	Conventional
Installed capacity	2 x 300,000 W (400 hp)
Annual generation	1,400,000 kWh (5,000,000 MJ)

Last updated July 01, 2019

The Ecker Dam (German : Eckertalsperre) is a gravity dam in the Harz mountain range near Bad Harzburg, Germany. Constructed between 1939 and 1943, it is today operated by the Harzwasserwerke company. The dam's reservoir impounds the waters of the Ecker river and mainly serves for drinking water supply.

German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol in Italy, the German-speaking Community of Belgium, and Liechtenstein. It is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg and a co-official language in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland. The languages which are most similar to German are the other members of the West Germanic language branch: Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German/Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish. There are also strong similarities in vocabulary with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although those belong to the North Germanic group. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English.

A gravity dam is a dam constructed from concrete or stone masonry and designed to hold back water by primarily using the weight of the material alone to resist the horizontal pressure of water pushing against it. Gravity dams are designed so that each section of the dam is stable and independent of any other dam section.

The Harz is a Mittelgebirge that has the highest elevations in Northern Germany and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name Harz derives from the Middle High German word Hardt or Hart, Latinized as Hercynia. The Brocken is the highest summit in the Harz with an elevation of 1,141.1 metres (3,744 ft) above sea level. The Wurmberg is the highest peak located entirely within the state of Lower Saxony.

Operation

Ecker Reservoir Eckertalsperre.jpg — Ecker Reservoir

The dam is used for the supply of drinking water, flood protection, and raising water levels during times of low rainfall. With an average discharge of 16 million m³ per year, it provides drinking water to the cities of Brunswick, Wolfenbüttel, and Wolfsburg. A pipe system leads to a central water tower near Liebenburg, where the waters of the nearby Grane Dam are also collected.

Drinking water, also known as potable water, is water that is safe to drink or to use for food preparation. The amount of drinking water required to maintain good health varies, and depends on physical activity level, age, health-related issues, and environmental conditions. Americans, on average, drink one litre of water per day and 95% drink less than three litres per day. For those who work in a hot climate, up to 16 litres a day may be required. Liquid water, along with air pressure, nutrients, and solar energy, is essential for life.

Braunschweig, also called Brunswick in English, is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker River which connects it to the North Sea via the Aller and Weser Rivers. In 2016, it had a population of 250,704.

Wolfenbüttel is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District. It is best known as the location of the internationally renowned Herzog August Library and for having the largest concentration of timber-framed buildings in Germany. It is an episcopal see of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Brunswick. It is also home to the Jägermeister distillery and houses a campus of the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences.

Electricity generation is also provided through a small hydropower plant, operated by two turbines with an installed capacity of 2 x 300 kW and an annual generation of 1,400,000 kWh.

Electricity generation process of generating electrical power

Electricity generation is the process of generating electric power from sources of primary energy. For electric utilities in the electric power industry, it is the first stage in the delivery of electricity to end users, the other stages being transmission, distribution, energy storage and recovery, using the pumped-storage method.

Hydropower or water power is power derived from the energy of falling water or fast running water, which may be harnessed for useful purposes. Since ancient times, hydropower from many kinds of watermills has been used as a renewable energy source for irrigation and the operation of various mechanical devices, such as gristmills, sawmills, textile mills, trip hammers, dock cranes, domestic lifts, and ore mills. A trompe, which produces compressed air from falling water, is sometimes used to power other machinery at a distance.

Construction

The Ecker Dam was the third modern reservoir built in the Harz mountains, after the construction of the Söse Dam in 1928–1931 and the Oder Dam in 1930–1933. It was laid out in the Ecker catchment area at the foot of the Brocken massif, characterised by extended upland bogs and heavy precipitation of up to 1,700 mm (67 in) a year. The reservoir uses a section of the river valley which, below a prominent trough end, was dug out in the shape of a basin by an ice age glacier.

The Söse Dam is a dam in the Lower Saxon part of the Harz mountains near Osterode in the German state of Lower Saxony.

The Oder Dam is a dam in the Harz mountains of Germany. It lies above Bad Lauterberg in the district of Göttingen in Lower Saxony and impounds the river Oder. The dam went into service in 1934 after taking 3 years to build. The owner and operator of the Oder Dam is the Harzwasserwerke.

The Brocken, also sometimes referred to as the Blocksberg, is the highest peak of the Harz mountain range and also the highest peak of Northern Germany; it is located near Schierke in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt between the rivers Weser and Elbe. Although its elevation of 1,141 metres (3,743 ft) is below alpine dimensions, its microclimate resembles that of mountains of about 2,000 m (6,600 ft). The peak above the tree line tends to have a snow cover from September to May, and mists and fogs shroud it up to 300 days of the year. The mean annual temperature is only 2.9 °C (37.2 °F). It is the easternmost mountain in northern Germany; travelling east in a straight line, the next prominent elevation would be in the Ural Mountains in Russia.

Construction started in 1939, mainly to meet the increasing demand for drinking water in the Brunswick greater area and around the recently openend Wolfsburg Volkswagen Plant. For the first time in Germany, coarse-grained concrete (Rüttelgrobbeton) with an aggregate of up to 300 mm grain size was used to build the gravity structure. Works continued throughout World War II, when the Nazi authorities also deployed foreign workers (Fremdarbeiter) and POWs to complete the facilities.

The Wolfsburg Volkswagen Factory is the largest manufacturing plant in the world, in terms of area at just under 6.5 million m². The Wolfsburg plant produced 815,000 cars in 2015. It is the worldwide headquarters of the Volkswagen Group.

Concrete, usually Portland cement concrete, is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement that hardens over time—most frequently in the past a lime-based cement binder, such as lime putty, but sometimes with other hydraulic cements, such as a calcium aluminate cement or Portland Cement. It is distinguished from other, non-cementitious types of concrete all binding some form of aggregate together, including asphalt concrete with a bitumen binder, which is frequently used for road surfaces, and polymer concretes that use polymers as a binder.

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

After the war and the division into East and West Germany from 1949, the inner German Border ran straight through the site. The Border Troops of the German Democratic Republic had walls and barbed wire mounted on the dam crest and only about two-thirds of the facilities were accessible from the west. Access rights to operate the facilities were settled by bilateral agreements in the late 1970s.

East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic, was a country that existed from 1949 to 1990, when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. It described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state", and the territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces at the end of World War II — the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it; as a result, West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.

West Germany was the informal name for what was officially the Federal Republic of Germany, a country in Central Europe, in the period between its formation on 23 May 1949 and German reunification on 3 October 1990. During this Cold War period, the western portion of Germany was part of the Western bloc. The Federal Republic was created during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, established from eleven states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France. Its (provisional) capital was the city of Bonn. The Cold War era West Germany is sometimes retrospectively historically designated the "Bonn Republic".

The Border Troops of the German Democratic Republic was the border guard of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1946 to 1990.

Tourism

Though not accessible by car, the Ecker Dam and the circular trail around its reservoir are popular destinations for daytrippers. The dam wall is checkpoint no. 1 in the Harzer Wandernadel hiking trail network.

Notes

Peter Franke; Wolfgang Frey (1987), Talsperren in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (in German), Berlin: Systemdruck, ISBN 3-926520-00-0

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References

External links

Harzwasserwerke.de with a link to current dam data
Tourist information on the Ecker Dam
Historic photograph of the Ecker Dam in 1978

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