When the Americans marched into Grafing in early May 1945, it was better not to get caught with plate mines, hand grenades and belts of machine gun ammunition. However, there was still quite a bit of this explosive material in the village. Without much ado, it flew into the Melakweiher and sank there in the mud. In contrast, the salvage was all the more complex last year: pumping out, temporary road construction, two blastings, sludge disposal, renaturation. The bill for this is already more than half a million euros. And it is likely to increase further.
However, Mayor Christian Bauer (CSU) would prefer to say only this much: “So far we have paid 523,000 euros. The rest is not public.” However, the passage about non-publicity is inaccurate, which Bauer then noticed after some consideration. So again: Yes, the city has now hired a lawyer. No, the city is neither the defendant nor the plaintiff. It’s about “protecting yourself against unjustified claims”. No, the 523,000 euros would not be the same as a final invoice. Yes, the 750,000 euros in the room corresponds to the current estimate of the total costs for the campaign.
The ordnance fireworks workers recovered highly dangerous material from the Melak, here the head of an old rocket launcher.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
The Melak is a pond in the middle of the Goldberg residential area. It is completely hidden, about a hundred meters long and 25 meters wide, in a depression between houses and trees, right next to it is a rifle club and a tennis court. An excavator used a large shovel to continue digging mud out of the murky water. The subsoil was repeatedly removed up to a depth of four meters. On land, men in bright yellow hazmat suits scoured the mud for artifacts. With small rakes they dug through the wet, stinking dirt – steel helmets, German and Russian rifles, hand grenades, ammunition, parts of bazookas came to light.
The line items in the bill for this cleanup have added up for a number of reasons. First of all, from those for which the town of Grafing cannot do anything: the excavators simply dug up many times the ammunition and war equipment that had been suspected in the Melak mud. In the first excavator shovel alone there are said to have been 50,000 rounds of rifle ammunition. Messengers with special sensors drove across the lake several times to locate the material. Practically every time they came back with new finds.
A teller mine has to be blown up directly on site – taking the greatest possible precautions, of course.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
The effort alone for a plate mine, which could not be transported away and therefore had to be blown up on site: dig a pit and fill it with sandbags. Spread 120 tons of earth around it to cushion the pressure of the detonation. Nevertheless, the force damaged several windows on the east side of the pond. The city was accommodating and announced that it would pay for the damage in case of doubt. A still live British phosphorus bomb, on the other hand, could be taken away in a special container and detonated in a controlled manner in a gravel pit.
With regard to the second cost driver, things are more ambiguous. It is about ammunition residues that have been disposed of incorrectly, at least in part. It is said that parts of a hand grenade were still found in mud that had already been cleared in a reprocessing plant. The disposal company apparently accuses the bomb disposal service of not having tested the sludge sufficiently. The ordnance fireworks, on the other hand, deny this.
Thanks to an evacuation, no one was hurt, but the surrounding houses were.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
This is where Bauer’s “unjustified demands” come into play. What if Grafing ultimately had to bear the additional costs for incorrectly disposed ammunition? We’re talking about a high five-digit amount. At the moment, however, it looks like the final bill will probably only be drawn up in court.
The next procedure could then follow, but this time at the federal level: Bauer informed the Grafinger city council some time ago that there was a possibility of having at least part of the disposal costs reimbursed. But the federal government is not very keen on such payments, which is why the city has to prepare for a lengthy process.
Now the Melak can absorb more water again and thus protect the city center from flooding.
(Photo: Christian Endt)
All the same, the actual goal of the excavations, namely removing countless tons of mud from the pond and thereby improving flood protection, has been achieved. In the event of heavy rain, the Melak can now absorb significantly more water. This reduces the risk of flooding in downtown Grafing.