Hazardous waste dump Kölliken

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The hall for the rehabilitation of the landfill (2008)

The Kölliken hazardous waste landfill (SMDK) is a hazardous waste landfill operated from 1978 to 1985 in the Swiss municipality of Kölliken .

prehistory

In order to set up and operate the landfill, a consortium was initially founded in which the cantons of Aargau and Zurich , the city of Zurich and the simple society Basler Chemische Industrie (BCI, an amalgamation today consisting of Novartis , Syngenta , BASF (ex. Ciba AG ), Clariant , and Roche ) were involved. The aim of the consortium was to enable industry and commerce to dispose of hazardous waste in a clean manner. Whether this is possible in the old Köllik clay pit was controversial from the start.

The operation

The SMDK was opened on May 16, 1978 in an old clay pit near Kölliken. The conditions for the emplacement of waste were strict for the time, but without the operators being aware of the problems of long-term storage of hazardous waste. Waste materials were also dumped that, from today's perspective, should not have been stored, such as easily soluble salts . The biological degradation process was also underestimated. Over time, complaints from residents about the odor nuisance increased and fish died in the area. Since the operating consortium did not respond to the complaints, the Kölliken municipal council ordered the landfill to be closed on April 25, 1985.

Redevelopment

It was soon discovered that most of the toxins deposited in barrels could not simply remain in the ground. The consortium therefore had the current state of the landfill recorded between 1986 and 1990 . Security measures were then carried out from 1991 to 2001. From 2002 the dismantling of the landfill was planned. In January 2005, the overall renovation began . A total of 664,100 tons of material had to be removed. In order to avoid noise and odor nuisance during dismantling, the largest hall in Switzerland was built above the former landfill. Due to a fire in June 2008, the renovation work had to be interrupted until January 2009 in order to revise the safety concept . The planned daily output of 500 tons of hazardous waste to be disposed of had since fallen to 250 to 450 tons per day. The renovation costs amounted to over 900 million Swiss francs. In 2016, the bottom of the pit was irrigated in order to wash out and clear up residual loads after the contaminated rock under the landfill had been discharged .

Safety precautions

There was a negative pressure of 10 Pascal in the entire hall . Due to the stench and toxic fumes, access was only possible in an airtight protective suit with a gas mask and a breathing air bottle. All vehicles had airtight cabins.

Museum reception

Part of the so-called white zone of the non-contaminated area was dismantled after the work was completed and integrated into the permanent exhibition of the Eberhard company excavator museum in Fisibach . In addition to the lock systems for safe entry into the special construction machines without extensive personal safety equipment, documentary films from the history of the SMDK are also presented.

Reclamation

After the renovation, about half of the former landfill was filled with the excavated material from the Eppenberg tunnel .

Excavated material

In the spring of 2018 it became known that parts of the excavated material had been permanently placed in a landfill intended for waste slag near Lufingen . Contradicting reports on the legality of this procedure play a role in a current legal dispute between the canton and the federal government.

Dismantling

The hall has been dismantled since mid-April 2018. The whole pit is to be filled with earth again by 2023, so that at the end there will be a green meadow.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Forter: Play of colors. A century of environmental use by the Basel chemical industry. Chronos, Zurich 2000, ISBN 978-3-905313-46-8 , pp. 258-260.
  2. ↑ Badener Tagblatt: "Töffli-Drama: Gerhard Vogel († 86) closed the hazardous waste dump as a politician"
  3. ↑ Aargauer Zeitung of July 16, 2009, p. 17
  4. ↑ Martin Forter: Wrong game. The environmental sins of Basel chemistry before and after « Schweizerhalle ». Chronos, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-0340-1007-8 , p. 126.
  5. ↑ Landfill in Kölliken has been cleared. Neue Zürcher Zeitung , June 25, 2015, accessed on June 25, 2015 .
  6. ↑ How the canton of Jura brought Basel chemistry to its knees - Print edition: Ein Jurassisches Märchen , NZZ, September 2, 2016
  7. ↑ Kölliken hazardous waste dump: Head of the control center. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.srf.ch 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. Video in: Schweizer Fernsehen from February 25, 2009
  8. ↑ Hazardous waste dump Kölliken: Equipment maintenance.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Video in: Schweizer Fernsehen from February 24, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.srf.ch  
  9. ↑ Kölliken hazardous waste dump - EBIANUM excavator museum & events. Retrieved August 30, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Newspaper report on the landfill
  11. ↑ Marius Huber: Slag from the hazardous waste dump . In: Tages-Anzeiger . March 28, 2018 ( tagesanzeiger.ch [accessed April 9, 2018]).
  12. ↑ Now the hall in Kölliken is being dismantled

Coordinates: 47 ° 19 '27.4 "  N , 8 ° 0' 41.2"  E ; CH1903:  643303  /  241648