Lower Saxon State Department for Waterway, Coastal and Nature Conservation


The Lower Saxon Department for Water, Coastal and Nature Conservation is a department of the state of Lower Saxony, with its headquarters in Norden and is responsible to the Minister for the Environment and Climate Protection of Lower Saxony.
Main tasks are water management, nature conservation and coastal protection on the state level.

Departements

NLWKN is structured in relatively independend departements for different services at Norden, Hanover and Lüneburg:
The predecessor of today's NLWKN was the State Office for Water Management and Coastal Protection. NLWKN was founded on January 1, 1998. As part of a reform of environmental administration in Lower Saxony at the instigation of the then Environment Minister Hans-Heinrich Sander, the core authority for nature conservation, the Lower Saxony State Office for Ecology was merged with the dike protection department NLWK. NLÖ was dissolved.
In 2007, the NLWKN presented a "General Coastal Protection Plan" for the main dikes on the Lower Saxony mainland, intended to protect the coasts from the rising sea levels.