Vegla polder
The Vegla polders are former floodplains in the Stolberg district of Atsch and, in addition to the waste dump there from the former potash chemistry, form the largest industrial contaminated site in the North Rhine-Westphalian city region of Aachen . The name comes from the abbreviation VEGLA of the company Vereinigte Glaswerke GmbH, which has been called Saint-Gobain Glass Germany since 2000 . The Kali-Chemie was a 1928 merger, which was founded in 1852 by a chemical company Rhenania with other potash plants Resulting enterprises.
The United Glaswerke used for the production of flat glass surfaces to 1973, a method in which glass had to be ground and polished. For this purpose, quartz sand with water was used, which was then pumped with the glass abrasion through pipes into artificially created landing areas and washed up.
This process has been discontinued for over 30 years and the Vegla polder is now dry and left to nature. However, rainwater penetrates the soil and releases humic acid from the lignite-rich layers of earth below . The emerging black liquid reaches the Saubach , which runs in an easterly direction here, and worsens the water quality from water quality class II to the worst water quality class IV on the scale.
The Saubach, which smells of hydrogen sulfide, flows into the greater Inde after a few 100 meters behind the polders .
In 2007 a treatment plant for seepage water from the Vegla polders was put into operation on the northern company premises of Saint Gobain Glass ; the discharges into the Inde have been cleaner since then.
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Coordinates: 50 ° 47 ′ 43 ″ N , 6 ° 12 ′ 7 ″ E