Erftverband

The Erftverband was established as a water management association for the Erft River region in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in 1958. The association is currently composed of 264 members in the region, including cities, municipalities, regional districts and commercial enterprises. As one of eleven water management associations in NRW, the Erftverband performs integrated water management services. The association’s activity area comprises 4,216 km2 with approximately 2,600,000 inhabitants. Erftverband provides wastewater treatment for around 0.7 million inhabitants and about 0.2 industrial inhabitant equivalents of the operational region and has an installed treatment capacity of 1.1 million inhabitant equivalents.

The Erftverband plans, builds and operates groundwater measurement facilities, sewage treatment plants, storm water and flood water overflow tanks and is responsible for rivers in the Erft area. The Erftverband conducts business in the following fields:

• Wastewater treatment including residual management
• Observation and research on watercourses and groundwater
• Regulation and maintenance flowing watercourses

The Erftverband has extensive expertise in the operation of retention soil filters (RSF) for combined sewer overflow and separate sewer outlets. Starting in 1998 with the implementation of the first RSF, the Erftverband is currently operating 28 conventional RSF.

Besides water management activities, the Erftverband is also involved in research projects. Since 1991 the working group water quality management has been involved in 12 national and international projects either as project leader or project partner. Through these research activities profound knowledge on water quality, emission sources and measures to reduce pollution loads has been gained.

Main tasks in the project:

• WP 3: The Erftverband is operating, monitoring and evaluating one of the demonstration sites in WP3 (demonstration site no. 11). Based upon the broad knowledge and experience in operating RSF, the Erftverband is going to implement a new, innovative RSFWWTP+. The efficiency of this RSFWWTP+ and the effects on water quality will be observed. The transferability to general application cases will be shown. Extensive cooperation, knowledge and data exchange with WP4, WP5
• WP7 exploitation of RSFFlex technology and dissemination within at workshops and conferences.