The Kiliansteich (literally "
St. Kilian's Pond") is one of the oldest
reservoir
A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation.
Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...
s in Germany. The reservoir is located near
Straßberg (Harz) in the German state of
Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt ( ; ) is a States of Germany, state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. It covers an area of
and has a population of 2.17 million inhabitants, making it the List of German states ...
and supplies drinking water. It impounds the
Büschengraben stream. The lake is part of the heritage area (''Flächendenkmal'') of the
Lower Harz Pond and Ditch System.
The reservoir has a
rockfill dam with a watertight clay core that sits on a
shale
Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of Clay mineral, clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g., Kaolinite, kaolin, aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4) and tiny f ...
bedrock.
History
Originally there were four small ponds in a row on the site of the present-day reservoir that had been built for the
mining industry. Two of those were broken in 1901 and 1944 and all were in a poor condition. As a result, from 1989-1994 a new, higher dam was built at the site of the lowest dam; the two middle ponds were removed and the upper one, the Upper Kilian Pond (''Oberer Kiliansteich''), built in 1703, was upgraded into a
pre-dam (''Vorsperre'').
Originally laid as a drinking water reservoir, the lake is used today for flood and drought protection.
The dam on the original "Lower Kilian Pond" (''Unterer Kiliansteich'') was about 10 m high and had a retaining capacity of 165,000 m³. During the course of renovation the old wooden bottom outlet was salvaged on 25 September 1990 as the result on an initiative by Erika and Siegfried Lorenz. Following long-term conservation work at the ''
Harzwasserwerken'' in
Clausthal-Zellerfeld, who paid for the cost of transports and conservation, it was returned on 19 August 2010 to Straßberg. The wooden raceway is now a museum piece in the
Glasebach Pit.
See also
*
List of dams in Germany
*
Sources
Talsperren in Sachsen-Anhalt, Autorenkollegium, Hrsg. Talsperrenmeisterei des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt 1994
External links
*
Kiliansteich DamSaxony-Anhalt Department of the Environment: Dams according to § 88 of the State Water Law
{{Authority control
RKiliansteich
Buildings and structures completed in the 17th century
Infrastructure completed in 1994
Lower Harz Pond and Ditch System
Reservoirs in Saxony-Anhalt