COAL RESOURCES IN GERMANY

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27631, 12 April 1955, Page 8

COAL RESOURCES IN GERMANY

OPEN CAST MINING PROPOSAL

SUBSOIL WATER LEVEL TO BE SUNK

(From a Reuter Correspondent.) BONN

West German engineers are engaged on one of the biggest underground drainage projects ever to be undertaken in western Europe so that they can exploit the brown coal reserves which industry badly needs. In the country’s main brown coal industry centre between the Rhine at Cologne and the Belgian border at Aachen, it is proposed to sink the subsoil water level to nearly 300 metres (about 975 feet) below the surface, to enable the opencast miners to get at the brown coal.

This area, which produced 87 per cent, of Wtest Germany’s entire brown coal production in 1953, has reserves sufficient to last until the end of the century—at the present rate of consumption. The brown coal reserves near the surface are becoming exhausted. Production is scheduled to rise from 73,400,000 tons in 1953 to 94,000,000 tons by 1960. This rise will be achieved by going deeper as well as by working in larger units. The development plan has called for a multitude of orders and regulations and years of negotiation. Whole villages are being moved to sites where the coal has already been dug. Schools, houses, churches, shops, streets, communications and water supplies have had to be built—all paid for by the brown coal industry.

Big Drainage Plan The drainage project had proved the most controversial of the problems involved. Citizens, farmers and officials have expressed fears that it will affect not only agriculture but the water supply of the cities and industries of Cologne and Dusseldorf. The brown coal industry’s officials arc confident, however, that these fears are not justified. Only one tenth of the water of the little Erft River brown coal basin is due to be pumped out to make way for the miners over a period of from 6 to 10 years. The 750.000,000 cubic metres of water which will be pumped out each year is a very small quantity, they say. compared with the total volume of water, 100 times as great, which flows past Cologne in the Rhine every year. The pumping will make no difference to the cities, the officials say. As for agriculture, says Dr. F. Freisburger, the industry’s press official, “sugar beet is not sustained by water 250 metres down, the rain sees to that.’’

At first, the engineers thought of building a concrete dam to hold the water out of the mining area. Below the brown coal, there is known to be a thin layer of clay, and a narrow concrete wall down to it would have enabled the water inside this artificial “basin” to be pumped out. But the risks proved too great. Instead, it is proposed to surround the area with a circle of wells, each about 250 metres deep and linked with one another. Using ultra-modern suction drills, the engineers will dig narrow wells through which the water can be pumped out Round each well the pumping created a dry cone-shaped, drained area, with the apex at the bottom of the well. Once the wells are drilled, the pumps will, for the first 6 to 10 years, drain off 1500 cubic metres of water per minute. After that, they will only have to deal with the water draining into the the areasome 280 cubic metres a minute.