Dept. 67 - Environmental Office

Our Tasks
 

Environmental Protection - Water Bodies:

Commercial Water Management (Lower Water Authority)

• Permissions, approvals, and monitoring of operational water uses (e.g., discharges or extractions), indirect discharges, wastewater treatment plants, and facilities with water-hazardous substances
•  Processing damage cases and reports of grievances
• Approval and monitoring of excavations (quarries)
• Approval of commercial drilling (e.g., for geothermal use or groundwater extraction)
• Monitoring of commercial and private heating oil consumer systems

 
Private and Municipal Water Protection (Lower Water Authority)

• Approval and monitoring of watercourse development measures, installations in and along water bodies, measures in floodplain and water protection areas, municipal and private sewage treatment plants, as well as dam and pond systems, and agricultural water uses
• Approval and monitoring of municipal and private sewage and stormwater discharges
• Approval of private and municipal drilling (e.g., for geothermal use or groundwater extraction)

 
Environmental Protection - General:

Immission Control (Lower Immission Control Authority)

• Approval and monitoring of facilities subject to the Federal Immission Control Act (BImSchG) due to their nature or operation being particularly suitable for causing harmful environmental effects
• Processing complaints regarding harmful environmental effects caused in the commercial-economic sector
• Preparation of immission control assessments in building permit and development plan procedures

 
Nature and Species Protection (Lower Nature Conservation Authority)

• Implementation of the intervention regulation according to the Federal and State Nature Conservation Acts (BNatSchG/LNatSchG) for land use in outdoor areas
• Monitoring of conservation area designations in accordance with landscape plans and ordinances, as well as granting exemptions or exceptions from prohibitions
• Supervision and care of natural monuments
• Issuance of riding permits
• Monitoring of the keeping, possession, and trade of protected species (reporting obligation, labeling, marketing)
• Protection of native wild plants and animals; if necessary, granting exemptions or exceptions from access prohibitions
• Review of species protection concerns in approval procedures

 
​​​​Soil Protection (Lower Soil Protection Authority)

• Preservation of natural soils
• Investigations into soil contamination and soil functions
• Soil protection assessments and evaluations
• Identification, investigation, and remediation of contaminated sites
• Provision of information from the contaminated site suspicion register
• Technical support for the reactivation of industrial and commercial brownfields for renewed use

 
Waste Management (Lower Waste Management Authority)

• Monitoring waste disposal (especially hazardous waste) from the commercial sector
• Regulatory and fine enforcement actions for illegal waste disposal from the private sector (e.g., illegal dumping)
• Approval and monitoring of landfills
• Processing notifications and permits for collectors, transporters, traders, and brokers
• Processing notifications for collections from private households (e.g., scrap metal and used textiles)

Our Services in Numbers

We take care of approximately:

• 5,000 businesses with water-related relevance
• 140 BImSchG facilities and several thousand other facilities subject to emission control regulations
• 1,600 producers of hazardous waste
• 3,500 km of flowing watercourses
• 7,500 private, municipal, or agricultural water usages
• Areas with landscape conservation areas (over 700 km²) and nature conservation areas (over 20 km²) as well as approximately 500 landscape-relevant interventions annually
• 800 contaminated site suspicion areas

Our Goals for You

Our aim is to protect the natural foundations of life based on legal regulations. In doing so, we primarily strive to completely avoid environmental impairments. Where this is not feasible, such impairments are to be minimized and, if possible, compensated.

If you want to implement an environmentally relevant project, we offer our support early in the planning phase to ensure that the subsequent approval process can proceed more smoothly. When you contact us, your concern often affects multiple areas of the Environmental Office. In such cases, we coordinate the internal office processes for you.

We aim to handle your concerns not only competently but also promptly. We adhere to the short processing times of the RAL quality mark "Business-Friendly Administration" and have also committed ourselves to other areas, e.g., processing approvals, statements, and neighbor complaints within specific timeframes.

If you become aware of environmental damage that needs to be addressed immediately, you can contact the fire or police control centers outside the office's working hours. They will then alert the Environmental Office's 24-hour on-call service.