17 June 2011 was deliberately chosen for the opening of the southern section of the Werbellinkanal: Exactly 97 years after Kaiser Wilhelm II opened the former Hohenzollern Canal - now the Havel-Oder Waterway (HOW) - the municipality of Marienwerder in the district of Barnim (Brandenburg) celebrated the completion of the new construction with a colourful boat parade.
The new "Old Werbellin Canal" connects the HOW at kilometre 54.8 with the Finow Canal west of the Ruhlsdorf lock. Of this 3.1 km long section of the Werbellinkanal, only around 400 metres have been used as other federal inland waterways to date; the remaining 2.7 km were filled with spoil and household goods in the 1920s and 1930s and subsequently used for agricultural purposes.
It is the first canal construction project in the Federal Republic of Germany to be driven forward and completed by a local authority. The reconstruction of this section of the canal was not without controversy in the municipality and the district.
Following planning approval in May 2008, the ground-breaking ceremony took place in September of the same year. The canal was flooded just one year later. Two necessary new bridge constructions delayed the opening and release until 2011.
The new canal section is 14 metres wide and 1.70 metres deep on average. The passage at the bridges is 7.10 metres wide,
The clearance height is 3.80 metres. The northern section of the Werbellin Canal, which was built in 1765, only had to be widened.
In the middle section, it was necessary to build parts of the embankment as the terrain is lower than the water level. In the southern section along the Finow Canal, the historical route had to be changed as it would have been too costly to remove the material used for backfilling at the time.
A total of around six million euros was spent on the construction of the canal and bridges, as well as on compensatory measures such as the creation of two amphibian ponds. A good 70% of this sum was provided by the European Union, the district contributed 600,000 euros and the employment agency 250,000 euros. In the end, the municipality of Marienwerder with its 1,800 inhabitants had to bear more than one million euros.
The completion and opening of the new section of canal is the first new construction project to be realised as part of the Water Tourism Initiative North Brandenburg (WIN), which was founded in 2004. There is now a direct link for water sports enthusiasts between the historic Finow Canal and the waters of Werbellin.
This connection is also a prerequisite for the expansion of licence-free charter traffic in the north-east of Brandenburg, which is to be made possible by entering this area in the charter boat regulations of the state of Brandenburg in September 2011.
A signalling system at the small Marienwerder waterway junction will then enable pleasure craft travelling on the Werbellinkanal to cross the Havel-Oder waterway, which is heavily used by commercial shipping.
At this point, the new canal section is also to be categorised by the responsible ministry as a 1st order state waterway so that the municipality of Marienwerder will not also have to bear the maintenance costs in future.
