Ruhrverband bids farewell to Prof Norbert Jardin on his retirement

The Chairman of the Executive Board of the Ruhrverband, Prof. Norbert Jardin, retired on 30 April 2025 after 30 years with the Essen-based water management company. He will be succeeded as Chairman of the Executive Board and Chief Technology and River Basin Management Officer on 1 May 2025 by Prof. Christoph Donner, who was CEO of Berliner Wasserbetriebe until November 2024. This means that the Ruhrverband will have a completely new Executive Board team within a year, as Carolin-Beate Fieback, Board Member for Human Resources, Administration and Social Affairs, has been in office since 1 May 2024 and Christoph Gerbersmann, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board and Board Member for Finance, since 1 October 2024.

The Ruhrverband's highest supervisory body, the Association Council, bid farewell to Norbert Jardin on his last working day, 30 April, with a reception in Essen's Kreuzeskirche church to mark his well-deserved retirement. In front of around 200 invited guests, Thomas Kufen, Lord Mayor of the City of Essen and Chairman of the Association Council of the Ruhrverband, Gunda Röstel, Managing Director of Stadtentwässerung Dresden and Vice President of Water/Wastewater at the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), and Prof. Kalanithy Vairavam paid tribute to Norbert Jardin. Kalanithy Vairavamoorthy, Executive Director of the International Water Association (IWA), for his services to the Ruhrverband and the German and international water industry.

Norbert Jardin has been a member of the Ruhrverband's Executive Board since March 2016 and was appointed Chairman of the Executive Board in November 2019. In 1995, after studying civil engineering at the universities of Karlsruhe, Darmstadt and Stanford and completing his doctorate on increased biological phosphorus elimination, he joined the Ruhrverband as a project engineer. In 1997, he was appointed head of the planning department.

He is the author of more than 140 scientific publications, has been involved in promoting young scientists at the TU Darmstadt since 2002 and is co-editor of the standard work "Taschenbuch der Stadtentwässerung". In 2007, he was appointed honorary professor at the TU Darmstadt. During his tenure as Chairman of the Executive Board, Ruhrverband became the first water management company in Germany to become energy-neutral, meaning that the company produces more energy from renewable sources than its operating facilities and administrative sites consume in the same period.

Other milestones in his professional career included the commissioning of Germany's first wastewater treatment plant using the patented Nereda® process for wastewater treatment and the successful endeavour to lower the minimum water flow limits in the Ruhrverband Act. The amendment to the law was passed by the NRW state parliament in December 2024 and allows the Ruhrverband to manage its reservoir system in a more climate-resilient way, thereby securing the water supply for 4.6 million people.
Norbert Jardin has received several awards for his professional work, including the Karl Imhoff Prize from the German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste (DWA) and the Harrison Prescott Eddy Medal from the Water Environment Federation (WEF). Last year, the International Water Association (IWA) named him a "Distinguished Fellow" for life together with six other renowned water experts from Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia for his commitment at national and international level.
The Ruhrverband would like to thank Norbert Jardin for his prudent entrepreneurial behaviour, with which he has guided the association through challenging times, and wishes him all the best for the new phase of his life.

The new Chairman of the Executive Board, Christoph Donner, was born in Sauerland and lives in Mülheim an der Ruhr. The move from Berlin to the Ruhrverband is something of a homecoming for him, both professionally and personally, because before he moved to Harzwasserwerke in Hildesheim as Technical Managing Director in 2017 and finally to Berliner Wasserbetriebe as CEO and Technical Director in 2023, the geologist with a doctorate had been in charge of the operational management of the technical division as Technical Director at RWW (Rheinisch-Westfälische Wasserwerksgesellschaft mbH). As a regional drinking water supplier for more than one million people, RWW is one of the largest water-extracting members of the Ruhrverband.