A decades-long project to transform Germany's former coal mines into a massive lake complex will reach completion this April, creating a watery landscape almost as large as Italy's Lake Como. Lake Sedlitz, the final addition to the 14,000 hectare Lusatian Lakeland, will open for swimming and boating for the first time at the end of this month.
According to the Federal Environment Agency, Germany has more than 12,000 natural lakes, along with hundreds of artificial bodies of water. In 2003, 575 open-cast lignite mining lakes were recorded in Germany alone, and their number will keep rising as more mines are flooded. Most are located in Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, but none come close to the scale of the project in Lusatia, between Berlin and Dresden.
In the German Democratic Republic, miners extracted more than two billion tonnes of lignite from depths of over 60 metres, leaving huge craters. Flooding began in 1967 with Lake Senftenberg. Without mining, Lusatia would have remained a region almost without lakes, as its gravel and sand landscape does not naturally form them. The Lusatian Lakeland now comprises 23 human-made post-mining lakes, and ten are to be connected by canals for leisure boating, creating a continuously navigable area of 7,000 hectares.
The Lausitz and Central-German Mining Administration Company (LMBV) is responsible for the rehabilitation. Dr Uwe Steinhuber says the process will take two generations. The mining reorganisation in Lusatia has cost around €7 billion so far, and a further €4.8 billion will probably be required over the next 25 years. Water is channelled into the lakes from the Neisse, Spree and Schwarzer Elster rivers, since flooding by groundwater and rain alone would take 80 to 100 years.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing