The Zollverein Colliery with its famous shaft XII winding tower is not only a UNESCO World Heritage Site and by far the most famous landmark in the Ruhr region, but was also an active part of RAG's mine water management until 3 March 2023.

Parts of the active mining period were preserved above ground, and there was also a small "mine" underground at a depth of around 1,000 metres. In addition to the landmark Shaft XII, Shaft 2 is the second underground entrance a few hundred metres away. Until the afternoon of 3 March 2023, about 8,000 litres of mine water (almost 50 bathtubs per minute) were pumped from the bottom of the shaft to the surface every minute by large and powerful pumps and fed into the Emscher river. That's over now!

In April 2020, THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU received an order from RAG Aktiengesellschaft to convert all the remaining mine water retention sites in the Ruhr region where mine water is pumped from underground so that water no longer has to be pumped there as a rule and thus no shafts and roadways are needed underground. Over the past almost three years, THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU staff have been working flat out to achieve this goal, initially at the Concordia site in Oberhausen and the Amalie and Zollverein sites in Essen. At the Concordia site this was already the case in October last year, so that shafts 2 and 6 there have since been backfilled with concrete. At the Zollverein colliery, shafts 2 and XII have been filled with concrete since Friday afternoon. The Amalie and Marie shafts of the old mine of the same name in the centre of Essen will follow in the next few days.

THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU has thus reached an important stage in the construction project, which is scheduled to last several years. For RAG it means that the goal of freeing the Emscher from decades of mine water discharge has now been achieved. The Emscher, formerly a symbol of the negative consequences of the coal and steel industry on the Rhine and Ruhr, will thus finally become a Green Belt across the coalfield.

In the next few years THYSSEN SCHACHTBAU will be converting the former mining sites Friedlicher Nachbar and Robert Müser in Bochum, Heinrich in Essen as well as Hünxe and Lohberg.

We keep you informed!