Bonfol

Bonfol
State :	Switzerland
Canton :	Law (JU)
District :	Porrentruy
BFS no. :	6775
Postal code :	2944
Coordinates :	578.35 thousand  /  258 751 coordinates: 47 ° 28 '45 "  N , 7 ° 9' 5"  O ; CH1903:  five hundred seventy-eight thousand three hundred fifty  /  two hundred fifty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-one
Height :	432  m above sea level M.
Height range :	411–489 m above sea level M.
Area :	13.58  km²
Residents:	666 (December 31, 2018)
Population density :	49 inhabitants per km²
Website:	www.bonfol.ch
Saint-Laurent church in Bonfol
Location of the municipality

Bonfol is a municipality in the Porrentruy district in the canton of Jura in Switzerland . The former German name Pumpfel is no longer used today.

geography

Historic aerial photo by Werner Friedli (1910–1996) from September 12, 1950

Bonfol is 432  m above sea level. M. , 9 km northeast of the district capital Porrentruy (air line). The former street line village extends in the valley low of the Vendline in the extreme northeast of the Ajoie (German Elsgau ) on the border with France .

The area of ​​the 13.6 km² municipal area includes in the western part the wide, open and slightly undulating table Jura landscape of the northern Ajoie and the valley low of the upper reaches of the Vendline. The highest point in the municipality is just 483  m above sea level. M. To the east, the community area extends into extensive forests, including Le Chêtre , Bois Juré and Combe Guerri , which are 470  m above sea level. M. form the watershed between the catchment areas of the Rhine and Rhone . The area extends in a narrow corner to the course of the Largue , a left tributary of the Ill , which flows to the Rhine. However, the majority of the municipality is drained from the Vendline to the Allaine and thus towards the Mediterranean . In 1997, 6% of the municipal area was settled, 44% forest and woodland, 48% agriculture and about 2% was unproductive land.

Several individual farms belong to Bonfol. Neighboring communities of Bonfol are Beurnevésin , Damphreux and Vendlincourt in the canton of Jura and Courtavon and Pfetterhouse in France.

Population development
year	Residents
1850	1,263
1900	1,340
1910	1,303
1930	1,020
1950	1,017
1960	992
1970	888
1980	833
1990	793
2000	679

population

With 666 inhabitants (as of December 31, 2018), Bonfol is one of the medium-sized communities in the canton of Jura. 84.7% of the residents are French-speaking, 12.2% German-speaking and 1.6% Spanish-speaking (as of 2000). The population of Bonfol reached its highest level as early as 1900. Since then, a decrease of around 50% has been recorded.

economy

At the end of the 19th century, Bonfol changed from an agricultural to an industrial village. The farming village became famous as early as the 18th century thanks to the local pottery trade. The quality of the local clay deposits was already known in the Middle Ages. The manufacture of the caquelons (refractory earthenware pans) was replaced in 1912 by the factory production of industrial ceramics . In 1951 the company CISA SA was founded, which dug a clay pit to produce tiles, among other things. After the mine was closed, the company signed a contract with the Basel chemical industry in 1961 for the storage of chemical waste in the supposedly airtight mine. At that time, storage was considered environmentally friendly compared to the disposal in the Rhine that was practiced up until the 1940s.

There are other jobs in the watch industry and in the manufacture of ball bearings . Thanks to the fertile soils in the Ajoie, agriculture is still of great importance.

traffic

The municipality is located off the main thoroughfares in the border region of the northeastern Ajoie, but has one border crossing each to the two neighboring French municipalities. On July 14, 1901, the standard-gauge railway Porrentruy-Bonfol of the Chemins de fer du Jura was opened, which connects the village to public transport.

history

A Merovingian cemetery was discovered north of the village in 1885 , where, among other things, an iron belt buckle from the 7th century was found. Bonfol is first mentioned in 1136 as Bunfol . In the following time numerous other names appeared such as Bonfon , Boufol , Bumpfol , Mumphfol , Boufoul and Benfoul .

Bonfol shared the checkered history of Ajoie, which first came to the Duchy of Basel in 1271 . It was under the Meieramt Coeuve from the 16th to the 18th century . From 1793 to 1815 Bonfol belonged to France and was initially part of the Département du Mont-Terrible , from 1800 connected to the Département Haut-Rhin . By decision of the Congress of Vienna , the place came to the canton of Bern in 1815 and on January 1, 1979 to the newly founded canton of Jura.

Attractions

See also : List of cultural assets in Bonfol

The parish church of Saint-Laurent in the lower part of the village was built in 1783–84. In the forest to the north of Bonfol is the Saint-Fromont chapel, which is the destination of a pilgrimage every Friday after ascension , because Saint Fromond is considered the patron of cattle.

In a small valley in the woods southeast of the village are the Étangs de Bonfol , former fish ponds, which were dammed in 1751–54 on the instructions of the Bishop of Basel. Today these ponds are under nature protection.

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  Temple (Ref. Church)

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  CJ station

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  Eglise Saint-Laurent

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  Place Louis Chevrolet

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  Fishing pond

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  Hazardous waste landfill

Chemical waste dump of the Basel chemical industry

Bonfol became famous for its hazardous waste landfill. The Basler Chemical Industry (BCI), an amalgamation of the chemical and pharmaceutical companies Novartis , Roche , Syngenta , Clariant and BASF (formerly Ciba ), deposited 114,000 tons of highly toxic chemical waste from their factories in it. The canton of Bern, the regional industry and the Swiss Army also delivered some waste in smaller quantities from 1961 to 1976. In 1981 water ran into the pit and pollutants were washed out. In the mid-1990s, a partial renovation with drainage and sewage treatment took place for 30 million francs. In October 1998 the federal contaminated site ordinance came into force, whereby the BCI assumed that the remediation would comply with the ordinance. Disposal was considered technically not feasible in 1999, until a feasibility study by the federal government declared refurbishment possible. After being occupied by Greenpeace Switzerland and under great public pressure, the canton of Jura and representatives of the Basler Chemical Industry (BCI) reached an agreement on the definitive rehabilitation of the hazardous waste dump in 2000 after a long dispute. The BCI assumed operational responsibility for the renovation. The schedule provided for a complete and permanent renovation of the Bonfol hazardous waste dump by 2015; Work started in 2010. A 3000-tonne steel structure with a hermetically sealed hall was built over the landfill to prevent the pollutants from escaping. The removal / excavation of the pollutants is done by robots in order to avoid the risk of poisoning workers. The planned renovation costs amounted to more than 350 million Swiss francs, at the time of completion to 380 million.

The additional safety measures developed after a local explosion on July 7, 2010 have been implemented as planned. BCI Betriebs-AG and its renovation partners therefore resumed activities on the site on April 11, 2011. For a pilot phase it was initially planned to test the correct functioning of all installations and all processes with inert clay material . Two months later, on May 18, 2011, the waste excavation was then continued.

At the end of August 2016 BCI wrote: "There is no more chemical waste in Bonfol". On September 2nd, their representatives celebrated the end of the excavation work with the cantonal and municipal representatives.

Personalities

• Gaëtan Haas (* 1992), ice hockey player

Web links

Commons : Bonfol  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of the municipality of Bonfol
• Information about Bonfol
• Dominique Prongué: Bonfol. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• www.martinforter.ch Article on the explosion during the remediation of the chemical waste dump on July 7, 2010 and the cloud of dust that escaped

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Permanent and non-permanent resident population by year, canton, district, municipality, population type and gender (permanent resident population). In: bfs. admin.ch . Federal Statistical Office (FSO), August 31, 2019, accessed on December 22, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Martin Forter: Play of colors. A century of environmental use by the Basel chemical industry, Chronos Verl., Zurich, 2000, pp. 237–244. ISBN 978-3-0340-1007-8
3. ↑ How the canton of Jura brought Basel chemistry to its knees - Print edition: Ein Jurassisches Märchen , NZZ, September 2, 2016
4. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. "Excavation hall moved in just two days"  
5. ↑ See http://www.cis-bonfol.ch/
6. ↑ Martin Forter: Wrong game. The environmental sins of Basel chemistry before and after “Schweizerhalle”. Chronos Verl., Zurich, 2010, pp. 102–120. ISBN 978-3-0340-1007-8 .
7. ↑ www.martinforter.ch Article on the Bonfol explosion or on the dust cloud that has escaped.
8. ↑ europaticker: Bonfol hazardous waste dump, a legacy of our past is being renovated (page no longer available).
9. ↑ Pilot phase: More than 1000 tons of waste excavated and prepared ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .