Heytgracht pumping station, Valkenburg aan de Geul, Limburg, Netherlandsi

Regional Level Types
Heytgracht pumping station	Quarry (Repurposed)
Valkenburg aan de Geul	Municipality
Limburg	Province
Netherlands	Country

The Heytgracht Pumping Station or Captering Heitgracht is a marl quarry (a well quarry) and water pumping station for drinking water in Dutch South Limburg in the municipality of Valkenburg aan de Geul. The underground limestone quarry is located in the hamlet of Plenkert west of Valkenburg on the Plenkertstraat and the Heytgracht pedestrian path. The quarry is located on the northwestern edge of the Polferbos on the northern edge of the Margraten Plateau in the transition to the Geuldal. At the site, the plateau plunges steeply for several meters.

About 30 meters to the west is the Groeve Einde Plenkertweg, about 30 meters to the south the Carolus Quarry and about 600 meters to the west the Vilter Quarry.

Initially, water extraction started here in a private well.

In 1904, the pumping station was put into use as a central drinking water supply to provide the population in the Geul Valley with drinking water. At that time, such a facility was a great luxury and there were few connections. The capacity of the pumping station was also limited in cubic meters.

In 1934, the water pumping station was significantly expanded to increase capacity, but that did not work very well.

In July 1988, water extraction at Pompstation Heytgracht was terminated because trichloroethane and other chlorinated hydrocarbons were found in the water that exceeded the maximum acceptable standards. Since then, the pump house has been out of use and the building is only used as a residence.

Heytgracht pumping station consists of a marl building that consists of a house at the front with the actual pump building behind it. The building was built on top of a system of corridors in which drinking water was collected in a method rare in the Netherlands. Water that seeped through the limestone was collected in gradually downward galleries cut into the limestone.

Originally it was two corridors that together had a length of approximately 20 meters. Where the two corridors came together was the well of the pumping station. A first expansion took place by constructing an approximately 15 meter long gallery approximately perpendicular to the eastern corridor in a southerly direction. With the largest expansion in 1934, a corridor of more than 200 meters long was constructed from the 15-meter corridor in a southerly direction.

In the pumping station, the water was pumped up in the well by means of a piston pump and transferred to a reservoir with a capacity of 125 cubic meters. From that reservoir, the drinking water went into the drinking water network without any treatment and the water reached the Geuldal residents unprocessed. The pumping station had a capacity of 40 cubic meters per hour and approximately 200,000 cubic meters per year.

Other Databases

Wikipedia:	https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompstation_Heytgracht
Wikidata ID:	Q95721324

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