Construction of The Bigge Dam
In 1956, the Landtag (parliament) of North Rhine-Westphalia passed a law for the financing of the Bigge Dam.
On 1 August 1956, the Bigge Dam Law came into force. According to this, each municipality was obliged to extract 1.2 pfennigs from every consumer of water for every m² of water they used – the so-called “Biggepfennig” – which went towards financing the construction of the Bigge Dam.
The building of the dam began in 1956 and was finished in 1965, although the planning could be said to reach back as far as 1938. The Listertalsperre, dating from 1912, became an arm of the new reservoir. The complete system encompasses a volume of water of 172 million m³, of which the Biggesee has 150 million and the Listertalsperre 22 million. Therefore the Biggesee system is the fifth largest reservoir in Germany in terms of capacity. The catchment area of both lakes comprises an area of 289 km2 (112 sq mi). The lakes themselves have a surface area of 8.76 km2 (3.38 sq mi) with a length of ca. 20 km (12 mi). The deepest point of the Biggesee when the water is at its planned level is about 52 m (171 ft).
Around 2550 people had to be re-settled in the newly-built districts of Neu-Listernohl, Sondern-Hanemicke und Eichhagen. New construction included 4.4 km (2.7 mi) of Bundesstraße, 14.8 km (9.2 mi) Landstraße, 18.2 km (11.3 mi) of local roads and 31 km (19 mi) of cycle routes, making altogether 68.4 km2 (26.4 sq mi) of new roads and paths. The “Bigge Valley Railway” was likewise newly laid out in the region of the lake. Building of these new traffic routes required eight large bridges and 24 smaller ones.
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