In 2006, on the advice of the low­er water author­i­ty of the Lake Con­stance dis­trict, the com­bined sew­er­age sys­tem of the local author­i­ty in Sip­plin­gen was reassessed by means of a pol­lu­tion load inves­ti­ga­tion.
As a result, it was nec­es­sary to increase the stor­age vol­ume of the storm over­flow basin “West”/Sulzbach spill­way. At the same time, the instal­la­tion of a lamel­la par­ti­cle sep­a­ra­tor was planned to reduce the sur­face load of the stormwa­ter tank for a giv­en design dis­charge and so decrease sol­id and pol­lu­tant load emis­sion into Lake Con­stance via the spill­ways. These mea­sures are also intend­ed to ensure com­pli­ance with the Lake Con­stance guide­lines in the future.
Stein­hardt GmbH Wassertech­nik was involved in the imple­men­ta­tion of the con­cept right from the plan­ning phase and has pro­vid­ed all plant com­po­nents for across-the-board equip­ment for the refur­bished over­flow sys­tem. In addi­tion to the HydroME­SI lamel­la par­ti­cle sep­a­ra­tor, which increas­es the sed­i­men­ta­tion capac­i­ty of the basin, a motor-con­trolled Elec­troSlide slide valve for the reg­u­la­tion of the dry weath­er dis­charge and an auto­mat­ed Hydro­Screen fine bar screen for the reten­tion of coarse mate­r­i­al were installed in the inlet area. The clean­ing con­cept is sup­ple­ment­ed by a Hydro­Self tank flush­ing sys­tem, which effec­tive­ly feeds solids sed­i­ment­ed on the tank bot­tom after rain events to the pump sump of the treat­ment plant.
By means of intel­li­gent con­trol log­ic, the indi­vid­ual plant com­po­nents are effec­tive­ly coor­di­nat­ed with each oth­er. The over­all con­cept enables the offi­cial­ly spec­i­fied dis­charge quan­ti­ties to be adhered to and the pol­lu­tant loads to be effec­tive­ly reduced. The new con­cep­tion of the Sip­plin­gen stormwa­ter over­flow basin is an exam­ple of mod­ern state-of-the-art rain­wa­ter treat­ment to pro­tect the valu­able drink­ing water reser­voir, Lake Con­stance, from anthro­pogenic pollution.