Zechau opencast mine
| Zechau opencast mine | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
| other names | Gertrud III opencast mine | ||
| Mining technology | Open pit mine on 4,561 km² | ||
| Information about the mining company | |||
| Start of operation | 1931 | ||
| End of operation | 1959 | ||
| Successor use | Renaturation to the FFH area Restloch Zechau | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Brown coal | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 51 ° 0 '50.4 " N , 12 ° 19' 29.7" E | ||
|
|||
| local community | Kriebitzsch | ||
| District ( NUTS3 ) | Altenburger Land | ||
| country | Free State of Thuringia | ||
| Country | Germany | ||
| District | Central German lignite district | ||
The open pit Zechau was a 1931 open pit Gertrud III open-minded and to 1959 existing open pit of the Central German lignite mining area . He served for the extraction of lignite and was in Meuselwitz Altenburger-coal mining area . After the closure, the FFH area Restloch Zechau was created on the site.
Geographical location
The Zechau open-cast mine, which today forms the “Zechau residual hole”, is located in the north-west of the Thuringian Altenburger Land between Meuselwitz in the north-west and Altenburg in the south-east. In terms of landscape, the area is assigned to the Altenburg-Zeitz loess hill country. The former Zechau opencast mine was located between Monstab , Großröda and the three Kriebitzsch districts Kriebitzsch , Altpoderschau and Zechau . A few kilometers to the west is the border with Saxony-Anhalt .
history
Beginnings of lignite mining around Zechau and Kriebitzsch
In the 17th century there is the first documentary evidence of lignite mining in the Altenburger Land and especially in the area around Zechau. The Altenburg city physician Dr. Matthias Zacharias Pilling found “burning earth” northwest of Rositz around 1671/72 , which he then described in a treatise. From the middle of the 19th century, lignite was mined in the Meuselwitz-Altenburg district using civil engineering. The following underground pits were in operation in the Kriebitzsch / Zechau area :
| Place (today's affiliation) | Name of the underground pit | Operating time |
|---|---|---|
| Kriebitzsch | Ida No. 108 | 1872-1952 |
| Union No. 112 | 1872-1952 | |
| Altpoderschau (district of Kriebitzsch) | Ernst # 104 | 1871-1952 |
| Zechau (district of Kriebitzsch) | Baunack No. 83 | 1867-1876 |
| Gertrude No. 131 | 1899-1959 | |
| Eugene No. 132 | 1900-1960 |
With the Altenburg – Meuselwitz – Zeitz railway line, which opened in 1872 and at which Kriebitzsch received a train station, lignite mining experienced an upswing, as new sales markets could be opened up with the railway. Furthermore, the development of lignite mining in Altenburger Land was favored by the takeover of the coal mines by financially strong stock corporations. In 1898 the Zechau-Kriebitzscher coal works “Glückauf”, based in Zechau, was created through the merging of the Gertrud shaft with the Glückauf shaft near Kriebitzsch. In the same year, this started coal mining in Gertrud's civil engineering. In addition, the Gertrud briquette factory was opened, which, like the in-house sugar factory, was supplied with raw coal from civil engineering. After the briquette factories Eugen-Schacht in Großröda and Ida-Schacht near Kriebitzsch followed in 1900 and 1902, there were seven briquette factories in Kriebitzsch and the surrounding area.
The Gertrud I opencast mine southeast of Kriebitzsch was opened up in 1907 by the Zechau-Kriebitzscher coal works. A few months later, coal mining began. The coal was transported to the briquette factory by cable car . In 1908, the coal works were taken over by the mining company Herzog Ernst with the shaft of the same name, which enabled a considerable increase in the production of briquettes and wet pressed bricks. The company also acquired larger coal fields near Monstab and Petsa south of Zechau. In 1911 the Eugen opencast mine northeast of Großröda was opened by the Zechau-Kriebitzscher coal works.
After the Leipzig sales syndicate, which had been concluded nine years earlier, was broken in 1912, the companies in the Meuselwitz-Altenburg lignite district, including the Zechau-Kriebitzscher Kohlenwerke, merged to form Meuselwitzer Brikettverkaufsgesellschaft mbH. The aim was to promote sales. The Union pits in Kriebitzsch and Ernst in Altpoderschau were bought by the coal works, and Ida, Agnes and Union were combined into one plant. This made the Zechau-Kriebitzscher Kohlenwerke the largest briquette producer in the Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg . With the electricity fed in by the company's own electrical center, around 125 villages were supplied with energy via the network of the Osterland intercity center. In 1917, lignite mining in the Gertrud I opencast mine, southeast of Kriebitzsch, ended. In the same year, the Gertrud II opencast mine near Petsa south of Zechau started operations. In the period that followed, the mining area reached right up to Monstab. Furthermore, the area between Monstab and Kröbern was dismantled.
The Zechau opencast mine (Gertrud III)
As a result of the economic depression at the end of the First World War, the Zechau-Kriebitzscher coal works merged with the Anhalt coal works in Halle (Saale) in 1918 . When the coal reserves of the Gertrud II opencast mine were gradually running out, the Anhalt Coal Works opened the Gertrud III opencast mine north of Kröbern in 1931 . The exposed masses of the new opencast mine were tipped into the remaining hole of the Gertrud II opencast mine, which was decommissioned in 1932. The raw coal from the Gertrud III opencast mine was needed to supply the company's own briquette factory. Its extraction began in 1933 as "broken" production, i.e. H. the coal was driven to the coal bunker with side box tippers and from there it was loaded onto a chain conveyor using a ditch scoop. Then it was transported to the briquette factory . During the ongoing mining operation, the opencast mine received modern equipment and systems, e.g. B. new bucket chain excavators with a bucket capacity of up to 800 liters and electric crawler excavators. By 1943, the company near Zechau grew into the largest in the Meuselwitz-Altenburg district. In 1937 z. B. the departments in Zechau and Kriebitzsch together 770 employees.
From 1934 onwards, a special bucket wheel excavator was used to extract topsoil for later recultivation measures . The three overburden cuts underneath were made by modern bucket-wheel and bucket-chain excavators. The coal from the seam , which is around 12 meters thick , was extracted using a bucket chain and another backhoe . Between 1931 and 1943 the opencast mine moved counterclockwise around a pivot point northwest of Kröbern. The relocation of the pivot point, which took place in 1943/44, necessitated the construction of all new tracks while operations continued. The opencast mine now turned clockwise around a pivot point south of Zechau. The production was only briefly interrupted at the end of the Second World War in 1945. The ongoing coal mining resulted in the demolition and relocation of the village of Petsa west of Kröbern between 1943 and 1947. Most of the 350 inhabitants moved to a newly built district in Kriebitzsch.
After the Second World War took place in the Soviet occupation zone without compensation expropriation of factories and plants by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD). As a result, the Zechau department was separated from the Anhalt coal works in 1946 . In the course of nationalization, the Gertrud mine became the property of the State of Thuringia. A short time later, the “Werksgruppe Zechau” was declared public property. Around 1950 the third pivot point in the Gertrud III opencast mine directly west of Zechau was put into operation. As a result, the Leesen location with its 1310 inhabitants was relocated between 1950 and 1952 and the corridor was then dredged. This was the largest settlement move to date. All graves in the Zechau-Leesen cemetery had to be reburied in Meuselwitz.
In 1952 the brown coal works (BKW) Zechau were formed, which included the Gertrud III opencast mine, the Gertrud, Union, Ida, Eugen, progress and Bruderzeche mines, as well as the Kriebitzsch and Zechau briquette factories and power plants. The Gertrud III opencast mine has been continued under the name Zechau opencast mine since then . After the heavy flooding of 1954, the open-cast mine stood still for a few weeks because the track system was washed away, embankments slipped and equipment sank in the mud.
In 1959, the coal mining of the Zechau opencast mine on the Zechau-Altpoderschau line on the western outskirts of Zechau came to a standstill. A total of 35 million tons of coal had been mined by then. The large equipment and systems were moved to the still existing surrounding opencast mines Phönix-Ost , Haselbach and Zipsendorf-Süd . The BKW Zechau was assigned to the BKW Rositz. The Bruderzeche and Ida-Schacht briquette factories were in operation until the 1960s, and the Zechau briquette factory until 1991. In the 1980s there were plans to resume active lignite mining. The Meuselwitz opencast mine, which was never opened, would also have dredged over the area of the former Zechau opencast mine.
| Open pit | Start of operating time | End of operating time |
|---|---|---|
| Gertrude I. | 1907 | 1917 |
| Gertrud II (Petsa) | 1917 | 1932 |
| Gertrud III (Zechau) | 1931 | 1959 |
Renaturation of the Zechau opencast mine
After the cessation of lignite mining, an unfilled residual hole with steep, unsecured embankments remained in the area of the Zechau opencast mine . Shortly after the closure in 1959, some of the peripheral areas of the remaining hole and between 1960 and 1962 the leveled central dump were reforested. Parts of the embankments and dumps that were threatened by landslides were secured a decade later. Particularly in the vicinity of the Zechau locality, where opencast mining came to a standstill, the recurring demolition of the steep slopes after 1959 meant that several houses, garden plots and fields had to be abandoned.
In the area of the former opencast mine, the three remaining holes Zechau I, II and III were created, with a total area of around 227 hectares. The remaining hole I was formed from the former coal railway exit in the east of the opencast mine. The remaining holes II and III emerged from the main remaining hole, which was divided into two smaller remaining holes by a lying protrusion. After the dewatering operations were stopped, the three holes were used to flush in industrial residues (coal pulp and ash) from the nearby briquette factory. Remaining hole III served as a clear water basin from 1967. To ensure operational safety, the water level was artificially kept at +178.5 m above sea level with the help of a pumping station. After the end of the flushing, the filled residual hole I was provided with a two-meter-thick layer of cultivated soil and then planted with bushes and trees.
The actual renovation of the former opencast mine was only carried out between 1975 and 1984 by the BKK Regis . The embankments were flattened in stages and the areas were then afforested. The focus was also on securing a number of former civil engineering works that had only been partially dredged over by the Zechau open-cast mine.
At the beginning of the 1990s, LMBV took on responsibility for the rehabilitation of the post-mining landscape . Among other things, the redevelopment of the groundwater management had to be carried out, since the re-rise and the resulting formation of a lake had to be coordinated with regard to nature conservation and the watering of settlement areas had to be prevented. In the decades since lignite mining stopped, an extraordinary flora and fauna developed in the area of the remaining holes II and III, which was placed under nature protection in 1990 . Later they were also designated as a fauna-flora-habitat area ( FFH area ).
Since the lignite seam with a thickness of about ten meters is exposed in the remaining hole Zechau III, the lignite tends to self-ignite under certain meteorological conditions. A permanent solution was implemented in 2010 with a complex system of earthworks in connection with a specially developed geogrid, underfloor irrigation and a start greening of the final layer of cultivated soil on the embankment.
Relocated places
| Relocation site | Residents | Year of relocation |
|---|---|---|
| Petsa | 350 | 1943-1947 |
| Reading | 1310 | 1950-1952 |