Münchehagen hazardous waste landfill

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Landfill body of the Münchehagen hazardous waste landfill

The Münchehagen hazardous waste landfill is a former landfill for hazardous waste in Lower Saxony , which is located south of the Münchehagen district of Rehburg .

location

The landfill site is located in western Lower Saxony in the area of ​​the town of Rehburg-Loccum in the Nienburg district . It is located between the places Münchehagen , Loccum and Wiedensahl on the edge of the Schaumburg Forest . The town centers are about 3–5 km from the landfill. About one kilometer west of the landfill is the state border with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia . In the area there are layers of clay and siltstone , several hundred meters thick, with boulder clay above them . Clay was extracted from the ground for brick making in the 1950s and 1960s . What remained were open clay pits, which were used for the disposal of waste in the late 1960s.

business

Entrance to the landfill site
Operations building on the site

In the 2.5 hectare so-called old landfill, around 56,000 m³ of partly liquid industrial waste from the manufacture of pesticides, paints and varnishes was stored in 25 open pits up to six meters deep in the years 1968–1973. Immediately adjacent to the east, the Company for Hazardous Waste Disposal Münchehagen set up an approx. 5.5 hectare hazardous waste dump . From 1977 to 1983, approx. 350,000 m³ of mostly solid waste, including several thousand tons of toxic substances, was stored in four 25 meter deep pits. These include fly ash containing dioxin from waste incineration plants and residues of the weed killer T-acid with the substance TCDD , which is known colloquially as Seveso-dioxin .

When bark fell from the trees in the neighboring forest around 1979 , a citizens' initiative was founded in 1980 and protests took place. The landfill hit the headlines nationwide in 1983 when it was suspected that 41 dioxin barrels had disappeared from Seveso . As a result, members of the citizens' initiative blocked the access to the landfill. In 1985, the highest concentration of dioxin in the world up to that point was found in a water sample at the Münchehagen landfill site. In 1985, the Lower Saxony state parliament set up a parliamentary committee of inquiry which dealt with the state control of private hazardous waste disposal, including the landfills in Münchehagen and Hoheneggelsen . The control of the Münchehagen hazardous waste landfill was the responsibility of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Agriculture under Gerhard Glup .

After further landfill polders were not officially approved and in 1983 the landfill was closed at the instigation of the city of Rehburg-Loccum after a lawsuit before the Higher Administrative Court , the operating company went bankrupt in 1985 . After a criminal complaint by the Lower Saxony parliamentary group of the Green Party for environmental violations , the Verden public prosecutor commissioned the Lower Saxony State Criminal Police Office (LKA) to clarify the waste storage. To this end, the LKA set up an eleven-person special commission (Soko 318 U) in November 1985 . Your investigations were directed against former operators of the facility as well as members of licensing and supervisory authorities. According to the final report of the special commission from November 1986, the landfill was operated under catastrophic conditions and there were serious errors on the part of the authorities.

Redevelopment

Measuring devices for monitoring the landfill
Monitoring of the groundwater outside the landfill site

After the company's bankruptcy in 1985, the state of Lower Saxony took over the landfill that had become contaminated and has been monitoring the facility ever since. Between 1987 and 2004 a mediation process took place at the Evangelical Academy Loccum , in which representatives of those affected, authorities and politicians negotiated how to deal with the contaminated site. The Lower Saxony state government took up some of the results of the mediation work and decided in 1997 to clean up the landfill. This included sealing at the top and encapsulation on the sides by means of a 1.26 km long and 30 meter deep cut-off wall , for which around 30 million euros were spent. The work was completed in 2001. Since then, a monitoring program has been used to monitor whether toxic substances are escaping, which costs around 400,000 euros annually. The closure of the landfill since 1983 resulted in costs of around 130 million euros.

In May 2014, more than 30 years after the landfill was closed, the second open day took place at the landfill - a first open day was held on 29 March when the structural safety measures (cut-off wall construction, surface sealing and construction of wells for groundwater monitoring) were completed September 2001, during which the population was given access to the site and was able to find out about securing the contaminated site.

See also

Web links

Commons : Münchehagen hazardous waste dump  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Striegnitz: From the conflict over toxic waste to cooperation in the circular economy
  2. ^ Tons of poison in the clay pit in: Die Zeit of December 6, 1985
  3. ↑ Toxic waste: after 30 years the danger of dioxins has been averted
  4. ↑ The fear remains in: Schaumburger Nachrichten of June 12, 2014
  5. ↑ Special commission investigates events around Münchehagen in: Hildesheimer Zeitung of November 21, 1985
  6. ↑ Final report of the Soko 318 U 73 pages (pdf)
  7. ↑ The chaos at the Münchehagen poison dump in: Hamburger Abendblatt, May 12, 1987
  8. ↑ Praxis Mediation: Altlast Münchehagen
  9. ↑ Sealing walls against high pollutant potential. Development, commitment, prospects
  10. ^ "Careful optimism" in matters of contaminated sites in: Schaumburger Nachrichten of October 1, 2013
  11. ↑ The poison on the doorstep in: Schaumburger Nachrichten of November 4, 2013
  12. ↑ a b State Secretary for the Environment Almut Kottwitz on the open day at the former Münchehagen hazardous waste dump as a press release by the Lower Saxony Ministry for the Environment, Energy and Climate Protection from May 9, 2014
  13. ↑ Invitation poster for an open day on the secured SAD Münchehagen contaminated site
  14. ↑ Open day at the Münchehagen hazardous waste dump in: BlickPunkt for the Nienburg district on May 12, 2014

Coordinates: 52 ° 24 ′ 41 ″  N , 9 ° 8 ′ 32 ″  E