The Upper Elbe Valley Works is headquartered in Dresden. The Works is responsible for the dams and the primary waterways in the state capital Dresden, the districts of Meissen and Saxon Switzerland - Eastern Ore Mountains as well as parts of the district of Bautzen. In addition, several bodies of water bordering the Czech Republic are located within the Upper Elbe Valley Works. But the Works is also responsible for the flood protection facilities of the Elbe federal waterway in the Upper Elbe Valley.
The Works maintains more than 1,000 facilities. In addition to the Klingenberg, Lehnmühle, Gottleuba and Malter dams, these also include numerous weirs, water gauges, dikes, flood protection walls and inland drainage facilities. The Lauenstein, Glashütte and Niederpöbel flood retention basins and the Radeburg 1 and Radeburg 2 dams also fall within the Works‘s purview.
The Upper Elbe Valley Works includes four dam management stations and three river management stations. The Radeburg flood protection storage facility houses, among other things, pumps, transport nets for helicopters, mobile flood protection elements and around 800,000 sandbags for emergencies. The Paulsdorf laboratory in the Eastern Ore Mountains is also part of the Upper Elbe Valley Works.
Since the flood of 2002, the Upper Elbe Valley Works has implemented many flood protection measures. Others are currently in the planning or execution stage. For example, Dresden's Old Town has been protected since 2011, thereby preventing flooding in the June flood of 2013. The districts of Mickten, Pieschen and Kaditz have been protected since 2014, and the western part of Dresden since 2017. But other places such as Radebeul, Freital and Heidenau have also been and are undergoing major construction.