Playing That Ace in the Hole

West Germany uproots thousands to exploit its coal reserves

Some 20,000 people have been relocated. Forty communities have been resettled, at an average yearly cost of $20 million. And still the job is only partly done. In the coming decades, 10,000 more people will be resettled and other new communities will rise. The object of this undertaking: to tap West Germany's great lignite, or brown coal, reserves, the largest in Europe, without causing irreparable destruction to the landscape.

The center of this great dig out, which has attracted the interest of both industrialists and environmentalists around the world, is a 1,000-sq.-mi. area bounded by the industrial cities of Duesseldorf, Aachen and Cologne. Known as the Brown Coal Triangle, it contains an estimated 50 billion tons of lignite, enough to meet West Germany's energy needs for 350 years. Unfortunately for the villagers who sit atop this fossil fuel bonanza, much of it lies just below the surface; it can only be recovered by open-pit or strip mining, which requires relocating the people and demolishing their houses before any coal is removed.

Uprooting so many people and stripping away their land would be far more difficult in the U.S., where companies have traditionally been able to take over private land only when they are building railroads, natural gas pipelines, power lines and other essential facilities. But under West Germany's 1950 Brown Coal Act, the only coal company in the Triangle, Rheinische Braunkohlenwerke (commonly called Rheinbraun), can evict homeowners as part of a national policy designed to meet energy needs.

There is a hitch, however. Under tough companion legislation passed in 1950 by the state government of Nordrhein-Westfalen, Rheinbraun is required to reimburse the displaced residents for the property they have lost and to restore the exploited lands to a reasonable approximation of their original state. In the Triangle, this has meant shifting thousands of acres of fertile soil, constructing networks of drainage pipes to pump out millions of gallons of water from the damp lignite, replanting and landscaping great tracts and helping resettle the people.

Rheinbraun has apparently been more than equal to the task. As of the end of 1977, it had mined 67 sq. mi., resurfaced two-thirds of this terrain, created 45 lakes and ponds from the excess water, planted 13,500 acres of new forests, reclaimed some 12,000 acres for farming and resettled 20,000 people. The company has also been profitably exporting its know-how to other countries, including the U.S.

Until a few years ago, West German planners considered coal only a secondary fuel resource. Then came the Arab oil embargo in 1973 and, more recently, a growing concern about the safety of nuclear power. As a result, West Germany, like the U.S., has turned increasingly to coal as its ace in the hole. The nation now relies on brown coal for 30% of its electrical power and 25% of its home heating needs. Rheinbraun alone has already dug seven open-pit mines, including the world's largest: the Fortuna-Garsdorf pit, which measures roughly 1.2 miles across and about 820 ft. deep. In October it began preliminary excavation at the giant 32-sq.-mi. Hambach site, parts of which will be gouged more than a quarter of a mile into the earth.

As usual, Rheinbraun's resettlement teams have been at work well in advance of the company's Krupp-built Bagger, monstrous earth removers that are two football fields long, four stories high, and can chew up 200,000 tons of earth in a day. The Hambach pit (named after a nearby village) will mean the loss of four communities with a total population of about 10,000. A number of villagers are vocal about the loss of their homes and what they consider inadequate compensation offers by Rheinbraun. Says Gerhard Heyden, a schoolteacher in the doomed town of Lichsteinstrass: "It's particularly hard for old people. I know a woman who was offered 47,000 marks for her house, and she can't find another one for less than 100,000 marks."

Company spokesmen acknowledge the complaints. But they point to the broad streets, well-tended lawns and gardens and bright modern houses in the new settlements, and note that the complaints usually dwindle when people move into their new homes. Says Willi Kaiser, the burgomaster of Bedburg, which includes the village of Kaster: "In the end people are usually satisfied."

Kaiser has more reason than most to be satisfied. Though Kaster is perched atop millions of tons of brown gold, the town won landmark status in the mid-1950s because most of its structures date from the 16th century. Under West German practice, that means Kaster probably need never fear the onslaught of Rheinbraun's omnivorous Bagger.

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