The Emscher () is a river, a tributary of the

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

, that flows through the

Ruhr area The Ruhr ( ; , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr Area, sometimes Ruhr District, Ruhr Region, or Ruhr Valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 1,160/km2 and a populati ...

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia or North-Rhine/Westphalia, commonly shortened to NRW, is a States of Germany, state () in Old states of Germany, Western Germany. With more than 18 million inhabitants, it is the List of German states by population, most ...

in western Germany. Its overall length is with a mean outflow near the mouth into the lower Rhine of .

Description

The Emscher has its wellspring in Holzwickede, east of the city of

Dortmund Dortmund (; ; ) is the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the List of cities in Germany by population, ninth-largest city in Germany. With a population of 614,495 inhabitants, it is the largest city ...

. Towns along the Emscher are Dortmund, Castrop-Rauxel, Herne, Recklinghausen, Gelsenkirchen, Essen, Bottrop, Oberhausen and Dinslaken, where it flows into the Rhine. At the centre of a vast industrial area with 5 million inhabitants the river is biologically dead, as it was used as an open waste-water canal from the end of the 19th century. The subsidence caused by coal mining along its route made the option of subterranean sewer pipes running alongside unworkable, as they would break each time the ground shifted. Owing to the steady flow of spoil from the mining industry it has been impossible for the route of the Emscher to be maintained and its mouth into the Rhine has shifted north twice. A large wastewater treatment plant at its mouth treats the water of the Emscher before it flows into the Rhine.

Restoration

Since the early 1990s, efforts to restore the Emscher to its natural state have been making headway. The last coal mine () was closed in December 2018. Now that coal mining near the route of the river has halted, a large underground pipe is being built along the path of the river. The first stretch of the river to be restored is that in the city of

. The overall project is headed by the public water board Emschergenossenschaft. The main work was completed at the end of August 2022, with a budget of 5.5 billion euros. The Emscher renaturation project, which is funded by a total of €1.3 billion in EU bank finance, protects and generates 1400 jobs per year.

References

External links

www.emschergenossenschaft.de
{{Authority control Rivers of North Rhine-Westphalia Rivers of Germany