The municipality of Gräfelfing wants to keep open the option of building an earth tank heat storage tank in the gravel pit on the Martinsrieder Feld. She is therefore asking the neighboring municipality of Planegg to release the Glück gravel company from the requirements for backfilling the gravelled pit on the municipal boundary. The deadline for this had already been extended once, but now time is of the essence. The Glück company would have to start backfilling in January 2023. But that would be the end of the ambitious pilot project for storing heat from solar energy or geothermal energy.
If everything goes according to plan, gravel pits will be backfilled and recultivated in a timely manner once mining is complete. That is what is written in the approval notices of the District Office. However, the municipalities have not had the best experience with filling the pits in the past, there have been delays and the district office has not looked too closely. To ensure that this does not happen at the pit on the Martinsrieder Feld, the municipality of Planegg has concluded a contract under private law with the gravel company Glück in addition to the requirements of the district office. The contract provides for high fines if the pit is not backfilled on time. This contract is now becoming a problem.
A contract hangs over Glück like the sword of Damocles
The municipality of Planegg has so far been cooperative with regard to the interests of the neighboring municipality of Gräfelfing in possibly using the pit as an earthen storage tank. A backfill stop was granted once before in the summer. They wanted to wait for the results of a feasibility study, so the deadline for backfilling was postponed to the end of 2023. Ultimately, the district office as the approval authority is responsible for every extension, and this is also shown to be cooperative. But the private contract continues to hang over the project like the sword of Damocles. The Glück company has to continue with the backfilling in January, otherwise the pit will not be backfilled by the end of 2023, and then there will be penalties.
In order to take this risk away from the company, the municipality of Gräfelfing now wants to ask the neighbors to cancel the contract and thus the obligation to fill in on time. The council unanimously approved the move at Tuesday’s meeting. Gräfelfing also wants to sit down with the neighboring municipality of Planegg, the district office and the gravel company to discuss how the pit should be filled in the long term. Thomas Heidenreich (CSU) emphasized that hand in hand with a cancellation of the private-law contract, the district office must also extend the filling period.
In fact, they will have to be conversations over longer periods of time. In the short term, no final decision can be expected as to whether the ground pool heat storage project will be implemented or not. It comes with immense costs and risks. The mayor of Gräfelfingen, Peter Köstler (CSU), who is not averse to the project in principle, has emphasized in the past that his priorities lie elsewhere, namely the rapid implementation of the geothermal energy plans.
With the proposal to persuade Planegger to annul the private-law contract, the administration is following the motion of the Greens. Martin Feldner (Green/Independent List) stated that the part of the pit lying on Planegger Flur had already been filled. The part that still has to be filled in lies exclusively in Gräfelfingen. In his opinion, the basis for the Planegger contract has thus been dropped. “It’s now just a Graefelfinger issue, let’s take Planegg out of the game.”