Irrigation

The half of the waste water which has been purified in the waste water treatment plant Steinhof are used by the Abwasserverband Braunschweig to irrigate 2,700 hectares of agriculturally-used land within the association’s area. This equates to around 10 million cubic metres of water per year.

The ground in the irrigation area is characterised by its high sand content. It is therefore not capable of holding much water, but can swiftly absorb large quantities of water.

The reason for irrigating is the low water-retention capacity in the root area. This is not sufficient to allow unrestricted plant growth during the vegetation period and it is therefore necessary to supply the plants with additional water. Regular irrigation is therefore necessary in order to ensure well-balanced plant growth.

This enables the agricultural enterprises operating within the Association’s area to cultivate demanding crops such as sugar beet or maize. Furthermore, cereals and rape are grown.

This is how it works:

The Association’s area is divided into four irrigation regions. Each region has a centrally-placed pump which distributes the clear water via an underground pressure-pipe network.

In all irrigation areas, the purified water from this network can be extracted via hydrants which are placed at intervals of 54 metres. The distribution on the irrigation areas is carried out using 165 irrigation machines belonging to the Association. Depending on the lay length, the machines have pipe lengths of between 320 and 600 metres, which means that one machine can irrigate an area of up to 3.5 hectares.