Zwenkau opencast mine
| Zwenkau opencast mine | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
| other names | Opencast mine Böhlen | ||
| Mining technology | Open pit mine on 26.8 km² | ||
| Overburden | 1400 million tons | ||
| Information about the mining company | |||
| Start of operation | 1921 | ||
| End of operation | 1998 | ||
| Successor use | Replenishment to Zwenkauer See | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Brown coal | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 51 ° 14 '15.7 " N , 12 ° 20' 24.8" E | ||
|
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| local community | Zwenkau , Böhlen , Leipzig | ||
| District ( NUTS3 ) | Leipzig | ||
| country | Free State of Saxony | ||
| Country | Germany | ||
| District | Central German lignite district | ||
The Zwenkau opencast mine (formerly the Böhlen opencast mine ) was an operation for the extraction of lignite in the Central German lignite area .
Geographical location
The Zwenkau opencast mine was located south of the city of Leipzig and north and east of the eponymous town of Zwenkau . The area of the opencast mine is today partly in the area of the city and the district of Leipzig . It belongs to the mining area south of Leipzig . The opencast mine was only separated from the Espenhain opencast mine to the east by the corridor of trunk road 2 and the Leipzig – Hof railway line . The Zwenkau lake is located on the renatured area of the opencast mine .
history
In 1921, the joint stock company Sächsische Werke began to open an opencast mine southwest of Böhlen (at that time Amtshauptmannschaft Leipzig ), from which lignite was extracted from 1924 for the operation of a briquette factory and a power station .
The overburden of the opencast mine was driven to the Hochhalde Lippendorf . A ring rinsing dump was also in operation here, the dam of which broke on June 24, 1927 and triggered an environmental disaster. The villages of Spahnsdorf and Lippendorf were partially destroyed and the overburden and coal exit of the opencast mine had to be redesigned.
On January 10, 1930, the 50 meter high conveyor bridge for transporting the overburden from the outcrop side to the overburden side with a span of 200 meters went into operation. Almost 2000 cubic meters of spoil could be moved per hour. Two coal seams with a thickness of up to 10 and 18 meters were mined.
On May 12, 1937, a hurricane gust tore over the conveyor bridge and destroyed it. After only seven months of planning and sixteen months of construction, the new Böhlen II conveyor bridge was able to start work. The meantime was bridged with train operations.
After the Second World War, the company passed into Soviet ownership as a reparation payment in 1946 and was run as a Soviet joint-stock company until 1952 . After it was returned to the GDR , the nationally owned enterprise (VEB) Kombinat Böhlen was created and from November 22, 1952 with the name VEB Kombinat "Otto Grotewohl" Böhlen (after Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl ).
In 1954, the conveyor bridge was endangered for the first time due to a tipping slide on the spoil side. In the following years the number of landslides increased. The problem was solved in the early 1970s with small support dumps at the base of the main dump, which were created by opening intermediate drops from the conveyor bridge.
In 1969, the Böhlen opencast mine was renamed the Zwenkau opencast mine and in 1971 it was assigned to the newly founded VEB Braunkohlenkombinat Espenhain (BKK) . In the GDR, individual parts of the company were often combined to form supra-regional units. From 1977 the opencast mine was called VEB Braunkohlenwerk (BKW) Borna, Zwenkau opencast mine. From October 1, 1980, BKW Borna was then a combine operation of the nationally owned Bitterfeld lignite combine , from which the United Mitteldeutsche Braunkohlenwerke AG, later MIBRAG ( Mitteldeutsche Braunkohlengesellschaft mbH), was founded on July 1, 1990 .
With the reduction of the Central German lignite industry after the end of the GDR, the Zwenkau opencast mine was gradually closed. From 1994 the opencast mine was leased to MIBRAG mbH to bridge the temporary closure of the United Schleenhain opencast mine , which was in need of modernization . In preparation for the commissioning of the new Lippendorf power plant, it was thus possible to secure the supply of the old power plants, which were out of operation by 1999 .
The decommissioned opencast mines were taken over by the Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbau-Verwaltungsgesellschaft (LMBV). In December 1998 the conveyor bridge went out of service. Then the remaining carbonization took place. The Zwenkau opencast mine was the last LMBV mining facility in the Central German Revier to be shut down when the last coal train left on September 30, 1999.
Degradation process
The mining of the outcrop initially proceeded in a westerly direction and then swiveled north until 1940. In this direction, the open-cast mine expanded between Zwenkau and the towns along the Pleiße from Böhlen to Gaschwitz until the end of the 1960s . Zeschwitz was the first village to fall victim to open-cast mining. Then came the large forest area of the Harth , through which the Gaschwitz – Zwenkau railway ran. This was shut down in 1957. The western districts were affected by the settlements along the Pleiße.
At the end of the 1960s, the direct road connection from Leipzig to Zwenkau ( Fernverkehrsstrasse 2 ) was interrupted and the direction of opencast mining turned west until the mid-1970s. In this direction, the southern half of the Elster reservoir and the large communities of Bösdorf and Eythra with formerly 1,100 and 2,100 inhabitants, respectively, were dredged over in the 1980s . In 1981 the Cospuden opencast mine branched off from the Zwenkau opencast mine.
Between 1972 and 1977, the White Elster had to be relocated around the mining area for 11 kilometers between Wiederau and Hartmannsdorf (concrete elster). The Leipzig – Zeitz railway line has also been redesigned. After turning south after 1985, mining came to a standstill in 1998. The conveyor bridge, which was initially to be preserved as a technical monument, was blown up in December 2001.
Because of the operation of the Böhlen / Zwenkau opencast mine, the following villages or settlement areas that were in its catchment area were abandoned and their residents were relocated.
- Zeschwitz (1943)
- Großdeuben -West (1956–63)
- Gaschwitz, western parts (1964/65)
- Prödel (1969/70)
- Zwenkau, partly (1971-75)
- Cospuden (1973)
- Hartmannsdorf, partly (1975)
- Zöbigker , partially (1978/79)
- Bösdorf (1980-82)
- Eythra (1983-87)
- Knauthain , partially (1984-86)
In total, more than 5600 people were resettled. The Böhlen / Zwenkau opencast mine claimed a total of 28.6 km² of land. During its operation, 580 million tons of raw lignite were extracted and 1,400 million tons of overburden moved.
Reclamation
The further use of the mining area of the decommissioned opencast mine Böhlen / Zwenkau is varied. In addition to backfilling with the overburden from the company's own operations, between 1960 and 1975 a total of 95 million cubic meters were added from the overburden of the nearby Peres opencast mine , which reached its destination via a 14-kilometer conveyor system and a conveyor spreader. For example, as a post-mining landscape , former exposure areas could be reclaimed relatively early, with the exception of the opencast mine entrance for arable land and forest area. When the relocation of trunk road 2 was due, it could already be led from Großdeuben to Zwenkau over the former open-cast mining site.
A substantial intensification of the recultivation was achieved after 1994, when this was transferred to the Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbau-Verwaltungsgesellschaft (LMBV). A large area of the eastern overburden area, which roughly corresponds to the area of the former Harth forest area, has been reforested with mixed forest and bears the name Neue Harth .
As in other opencast mines, the volume of the cleared coal is replaced by water, and lakes are created, whereby the main effort has to be made to secure the banks against embankment slides. The northern part of the Zwenkau opencast mine, together with the Cospuden opencast mine, forms the Cospudener See , which was completed in 2000 and which is now a popular local recreation destination.
The last mining area operated in an arc to the north of Zwenkau is the Zwenkauer See . This remaining hole was flooded with water from the drainage of the still active opencast mines Profen and Vereinigte Schleenhain as well as the Weißen Elster and the Pleiße and released for tourist use on May 9, 2015.
There is a wide land bridge between Lake Cospuden and Lake Zwenkau, over which the Autobahn 38 has been running since 2006 . The Belantis amusement park is located north of the motorway, also on a former open-cast mine .
Web links
- Zwenkau opencast mine at Ostkohle.de
- Panoramas of the Zwenkau opencast mine
- Zwenkau opencast mine at Devastiert.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Change of publications and perspectives. Booklet Böhlen / Zwenkau / Cospuden. Published by LMBV, 2009.
- ↑ Inventory 20681 VEB Braunkohlenveredlung Espenhain. State Archives Leipzig, accessed on January 26, 2015 .
- ↑ a b Ostkohle, Zwenkau opencast mine
- ↑ Data and facts about Lake Zwenkau. In: zwenkauer-see.com. Sächsisches Seebad Zwenkau GmbH & Co. KG, accessed on May 17, 2019 .