Environmental problems of coal production in the federal republic of of germany with particular reference to to the Ruhr

In 1979 it was noted that the production of deep-mined coal in the Federal Republic of Germany, including the Ruhr area, has risen once again. Since the beginning of the sixties the convenient source of both energy and raw material, oil, has been responsible for the falling levels of coal production in the Ruhr, to almost one half of peak production in 1956. Not much would have been needed to give up the entire troublesome and expensive process of deep coal mining in the Federal Republic in favour of the then cheap and bountiful oil. Only lignite managed to maintain a more or less steady annual production rate due to the direct conversion into electricity of a major part of its production at the site of extraction. Since the limitations and uncertainties governing the supply of crude oil have now been clearly exposed, the illusions about oil have begun to fade, and as a result confidence in our indigenous supplies of energy and raw material resources has been restored. What, however, are the implications of this revival of home-produced energy and raw material, which are not without problems both when produced and when consumed for the region in which they are extracted and brought to the surface, and where, to a large extent, the processing takes place? The region benefits from employment and investment, and in turn offers its resources (labour, land, water, air) inasmuch as past development has left them available for future development. But is the region to be covered with even more ‘honourable’ scars? In 1980, 87 million tonnes of deep mined coal were produced in the Federal Republic of Germany which resulted in roughly the same amount of minestone (spoil). Approximately 600 km² of densely populated area in the Ruhr district was already acquiring artificial drainage due to subsidence. Coking plants and old coal-based stations fired with deep mined coal pollute air and water. Lignite production in 1980 in the Federal Republic of Germany — which was almost entirely obtained by opencast mining — amounted to 130 million tonnes. To achieve this an additional 445×10⁶m³ of overburden had to be shifted. Already in 1977 in the Rhineland between Cologne, Dusseldorf and Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), 522 km² of mainly good agricultural land was acquired under compulsory purchase order for lignite mining. Villages, roads, rail and waterways were and continue to be re-routed and re-sited. The direct conversion of lignite into electricity produces emission and spreads pollution. Now, it is not only the people of the Ruhr area, the largest industrial conurbation in Europe, that have become sensitive to the impact of mining upon their environment. In all industrial countries it has been learned that those things which cannot be replaced, i.e. environment, are not always being valued by the free market at a price which represents the value they may have for the individual and possibly should have for all of us. Today the need for mining is hardly being questioned any more but people are voicing their opinion as to what is a just price to be paid. The citizen of the Ruhr, for instance, no longer accepts that the specific environmental impacts caused by deep coal mining, which produces a commodity wanted by the entire nation, should be borne solely at the place where it is produced and by the people who happen to live there. He demands that such burdens are borne by everybody who enjoys the benefits. Clear political ideas must be developed and made know as to how much we value home-produced energy sources, what proportion of the resulting burdens the country is willing to bear and how they are to be distributed fairly. There are many methods and technical means by which the burdens of the mining and industrial regions can be minimised, by which damage can be repaired and derelict areas reclaimed. The application of such means must be safeguarded by early planning and sufficient finanacing so that the exploitation of one resource will not result in other resources being lost.