Since 1 December 2021, Hamburg Wasser has been appealing the permit for its Nordheide wellfields in Lower Saxony, which it says supply around 300,000 Hamburg residents, about 13% of the 2.3 million people it serves. No hearing or ruling had been published by 1 November 2026.
A weaker permit than requested
The utility applied to pump up to 18.4 million cubic meters a year for 30 years. In 2019 the Harburg district authority granted only an "elevated permit" (gehobene Erlaubnis), which caps the long-term average at 16.1 million cubic meters and allows 18.4 million only in exceptional years. Since 2005, average abstraction from the Nordheide East and West wellfields has been 15.8 million cubic meters. Hamburg Wasser says the elevated permit is easier to revoke than the stronger right it wants.
Courts in a neighboring state
In October 2021 the Lüneburg administrative court dismissed third-party challenges and left the permit in force. Hamburg Wasser appealed to the Lower Saxony higher administrative court, seeking a stronger water right (a Bewilligung). In June 2025 the utility said no hearing date had been set.
More output from existing works
The dispute matters because Hamburg relies only on groundwater, abstracted from depths of 20 to 429 meters, and plans to raise peak output without building new works. In 2025 it announced a rise in maximum daily waterworks output from around 460,000 to 500,000 cubic meters inside existing plants. On an average day in 2025, about 335,000 cubic meters were available for distribution, roughly 73% of current peak capacity.
The appeal is one of several pressures on the system: the report also covers heavy rainfall in a city that is 40% sealed, new sludge and phosphorus rules from 2029, a VERA II sludge incinerator now budgeted at €315.1 million, and a €1.15 billion investment plan for 2025–2029. The full report, Water Systems Overview: Hamburg Wasser, is available for USD 499. For a free overview, read the Hamburg Wasser Utility Snapshot.