A Hi-Tech Revival for Europe's Foulest River

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/project-rehabilitates-europe-s-largest-open-sewer-in-ruhr-region-a-867406.html




In the heroic days of the coal mines, when 500,000 dust-covered miners risked their lives to drill their way through increasingly deeper layers of coal, they had a fatalistic motto underground: "It's dangerous in front of the miner's pick."

Now, the industry has virtually gone bust, and most of the region's mines have been closed. "In 2018, all mining subsidies will be discontinued," says Jochen Stemplewski, "and then the adage will be: 'The last man out can turn off the lights.'"
The man who has so unsentimentally come up with a new slogan for the Ruhr region, the industrial rust belt in western Germany, is the head of Germany's largest sewage treatment provider, based in the city of Essen. As the master of all manhole covers, he flushes out the bathwater and fecal matter of some 3 million area residents. A crew of over 1,500 helps him meet this challenge.

But Stemplewski, 59, has a problem. On this fall autumn day, the sewage manager is standing in rubber boots on a bridge near Dortmund. He points straight down to a brownish river on which used toilet paper and condoms are drifting by.