Since its opening in 2023, the newly designed playground at Lindenplatz has enjoyed great popularity. One special feature is that the Johannisbach stream has been incorporated into the playground. The stream channel has been widened and boulders and small water features have been added. Playing with water and sand encourages children to pour sand from the sandpit into the channel of the Johannisbach. This repeatedly blocks the stream channel and causes flooding on the adjacent road.

To change this, the channel of the stream will be replaced by a conventional drainage channel with a depth of 63 centimetres over a length of four meters in the area of the access road for maintenance vehicles on the corner of Königstraße/Lindenplatz from 22 September. This is being done in collaboration with Regionetz. The construction work is expected to take two weeks. During this time, no water will flow in the stream channel.

Both the length and the depth of the new channel are needed so that the sand can settle and is not transported beyond the channel. The city and Regionetz, which is responsible for cleaning the channel, hope that this will prevent flooding at Lindenplatz and Annuntiatenbach in the future. This reconstruction is a further measure at Lindenplatz.

As a first step, the administration had already had a stainless steel water channel installed at the sandpit. The idea behind this was to allow the children to play with water and sand in the sandpit. However, this solution did not stop the children from continuing to take the sand to the water channel. For this reason, other technical solutions were discussed in the relevant political committees in the summer of 2025. These included, for example, the deeper drainage channel that is now being installed.

However, the experts from the city and Regionetz are already working on the assumption that no structural measure can guarantee one hundred percent that children will no longer pour sand into the stream channel. The city and Regionetz are therefore once again appealing to all parents, children and citizens not to pour sand into the stream. This is the only way to ensure that playing in the sandpit is still possible.