Stadtwerke Gießen AG (SWG) and Stadtwerke Grünberg have agreed on their future co-operation in the area of water supply in Grünberg. This agreement guarantees a forward-looking and comprehensive supply partnership for the next 20 years.
On Friday, 4 June 2004, Grünberg's mayor, Frank Ide, and Gerhard Lange, first councillor, together with Manfred Siekmann, chairman of the board of Stadtwerke Gießen, Reinhard Paul, technical director, and Hans-Dieter Glatthaar and Bernhard Linker, the two operations managers of Stadtwerke Grünberg, signed the contract to support Grünberg's water supply. With the conclusion of the contract, Stadtwerke Gießen will in future supply water to the existing water supply to the town of Grünberg. The aim of this co-operation is to continue to secure the water supply for Grünberg without incurring unnecessary costs. In order to be able to continue to guarantee the required amount of water in Grünberg, it would have been necessary to renovate a well in Grünberg. Grünberg weighed up various options and never disregarded economic viability.
For the past two years, Grünberg's municipal utilities have been working on securing the drinking water supply for the town centre and the district of Göbelnrod in the long term. The reason for this was the discovery of inadequate surface sealing of the two deep wells "Wilde Grube" and "Keile Wiese" in Grünberg's Brunnental valley. Büro für Hydrogeologie und Umwelt in Gießen, Büro HG, prepared a comprehensive study to examine and evaluate possible supply options. In numerous meetings, the members of the operating committee discussed with the municipal authorities the possibility of an in-house supply through the drilling of a new well and a possible external supply by the Giessen municipal utilities. On 10 December 2003, the operating committee finally decided in favour of a partial supply via the renovated "Wilde Grube" well and a supply from the Queckborn source area of the Giessen municipal utility company, which plans to supply drinking water from Queckborn to Grünberg from the middle of next year. The cool water will be transported from the Queckborn waterworks to the elevated tank (Tannenköppel) in Grünberg via a five-kilometre-long water pipeline. SWG expects to start laying the pipeline this autumn. They are investing around 850 thousand euros in this construction project. SWG expects to supply between 200 and 500 thousand cubic metres of water per year to Grünberg.