The arrangement now, is such that, landowners no longer receive land in exchange for their property, only cash (parcels of land were once part of the package); with acreage at a premium in the German countryside, this can put a real pinch on local farmers who may lose a sliver of their land that they are never able to put back into productivity.
The Rhineland lignite mines are currently working at depths of up to 350m, and will dig up to 500m deep, depending on the depth of the lignite layers. At such depths, it is imperative for effective extraction to keep the earth dry, so ground water is drained out by a chain of pumping stations.
Most of this water goes unused and ends up in the Rhine and Maas rivers, lowering the water table in the region and concentrating the contaminates in what is left. The end result being poor quality water and less of it, and an ecosystem that may take thousands of years to repair itself.
Lands that were once prized for their rich top soil are never fully restored such that they can sustain productive agriculture. Even after the lignite mining pits are reclaimed, the soil left over is not suitable for vegetable farming or productive animal grazing because the good top soil (or, “overburden”) has been scraped off and remixed with the slag leftover from burning coal at local plants.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention the poor fuel quality of lignite, losing as much as 60% of its energy to the atmosphere as waste heat, and more carbon dioxide, particulates, and sulphur dioxide than bituminous and subbituminous coal.
There you have it, the evidence has been presented, and the case has been made. I will let you decide for yourself, but by my own calculations, bucket-wheel excavators are decidedly not clean tech.
Images: 1., 2. Wikipedia; 3., 4., 6., 7. BK59; 5., 8. © Forbidden Places, used with permission of author; 9. Courtesy of oeke-energie.de
About Timothy B. Hurst
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