The street in front of the Kirchseeon town hall is still damp that evening, but the rain stopped a few hours ago. However, the citizens of the market town have already experienced this differently. Namely, when the sky opened its floodgates and heavy rain pelted down on the earth. What is not so bad elsewhere due to the topography quickly becomes a serious problem in Kirchseeon. Again and again, parts of the community are flooded after heavy rainfall, resulting in extensive damage to buildings. On Monday evening, the municipal council, which decided a year ago to apply for a very special funding program from the Free State, was looking at how to protect oneself in a sensible way.
This bears the somewhat awkward title “Integral concept for municipal flash flood risk management” – which means nothing more than an expert analysis of where floods occur in the area and what the municipality can best do about it. The engineering office Spekter from Herzogenaurach, which specializes in the simulation of heavy rain events, is supposed to find out. The analysis has been running in Kirchseeon for a few months and the first results are already available, which Florian Brodrecht now presented. To do this, the experts first had to get an overview of the current situation and carried out a risk assessment and an inventory analysis. This includes several factors, such as the soil conditions in certain areas, but also the slope or the planting. All of this has an impact on how badly a particular area is affected by heavy rainfall, Brodrecht explained.
A simulation shows where in the municipality floods can occur
Not surprisingly, the experts have identified the low-lying Kirchseeoner Moos in the east of the municipality as the hotspot, where severe flooding has actually occurred repeatedly in recent years. But the site of the former railway sleeper factory, on which the new investor plans to build an entire residential area, is also considered a risk area. The engineering office presented a simulation of what happens when a lot of rule comes from the sky, which Brodrecht now showed at the meeting: Depending on the intensity of the precipitation, the blue spots on the municipal map grew larger and larger until finally some settlements were surrounded by them. “If the ditches are overloaded, it can also lead to flooding in residential areas,” says the expert.
The water is supposed to be diverted from the east of Kirchseeon via this drain. But the pipe reaches its limits in heavy rain.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
So that this can be prevented in the future, the next step is to carry out a risk analysis in which places with a particular need for action are to be filtered out. Finally, the results are discussed in two workshops with representatives of the municipality, the fire brigade and the building yard. “It’s about finding out what can be done with structural and non-structural means,” said Brodrecht, who, in addition to the construction of dams, also brought a better monitoring system or land provision into play. What effect the respective measures would have can also be played through in the simulation.
In order to draw the right conclusions from the concept, however, the experts are also dependent on the help of the citizens of Kirchseeon. On the website www.starkregenmelder.de Those affected can enter when and where flooding occurred in the community. The engineering office uses this data to check the calculated results of the simulation and to supplement them if necessary. The reports can also be submitted in the same way using a form that is available in the town hall.
The project is scheduled to run until the summer of next year
The project should be completed in the summer of next year. Then it is up to the community to draw the right conclusions from it. “The topic will keep us busy for a while,” said Mayor Jan Paeplow (CSU). The aim is to find good solutions for the community in the end. UWG councilor Christian Eringer, who is an active member of the Kirchseeon-Dorf volunteer fire brigade, also praised the simulation. The results so far are not a big surprise for him, after all, the problem areas have been known on site for a long time, “nevertheless, any help we get from experts is welcome”.
In addition to the report, the municipality also wants to promote the renaturation of the Kirchseeoner Moos, as Mayor Paeplow said. And solutions are also being sought for the outflow there, which in the past has repeatedly proved not to be really sufficient to withstand the water masses.