Bøtø Nor Pumping Station

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Bøtø Nor Pumping Station is a historic pumping station near Væggerløse on Falster, Denmark. It was built in 1870–1871 to drain Bøtø Nor, a long coastal lagoon along Falster’s southeast coast. The project was led by Edward Tesdorpf and a company he formed to reclaim the land. A 19-kilometre dyke and a system of canals were built to protect and drain the area.

The pumping station in Marrebæk housed a Burmeister & Wain steam engine and a wooden Archimedes screw. In 1872 the Baltic Sea flood breached the sea barrier in several places, but the pumping station survived and the dike was rebuilt by 1875. The station was modernized in 1901: the steam engine was replaced with an Atlas engine, and the wooden Archimedes screw was replaced with a steel one. An additional wind-driven Archimedes screw was added briefly, then removed in 1919.

A smaller supplementary pumping station was added in 1949. In 1967 the old station was decommissioned and a new, larger one was opened nearby, costing about 2 million kroner. The first electrical pump started on 15 November 1979. The old building has since been restored and turned into a museum about the project and the 1872 flood. The new pumping station sits just to the southwest of the old building and can pump 6,400 liters per second (about 55.2 million liters per day), draining land to a depth of 3.5 meters.