Processes
Minister: Follow-up costs of GDR mining are not just a matter of the state
In the northern field of the former potash mine, a loader is used to fill moisture backfill from processing residues and thus secure pit cavities. Photo: Michael Reichel / dpa-Zentralbild / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Thuringia’s hope of being able to stop or at least limit payments for old potash mines has not been fulfilled. Further legal steps are now being looked at.
According to Environment Minister Anja Siegesmund (Greens), Thuringia’s state government is examining further legal steps after the Kali ruling.
First, however, the written reasoning of the Higher Administrative Court will be awaited, said Siegesmund in Erfurt. It reacted to a lost case in the country for annual payments in the millions to the potash group K + S (Kassel).
After the ruling on Friday evening, the state must continue to bear the high costs of securing work in two disused potash pits in the Wartburg district. K + S is exempted from this by a contract from 1999. “The ecological follow-up costs of the GDR mining can not only be a matter for the country alone,” said Siegesmund.
She regrets that the Higher Administrative Court did not use the deficiencies in the exemption contract as an opportunity to «view the contract as void or at least to reduce the financial burden on the state from this contract».
Lawsuit filed
Because of the high burdens on the state budget, Thuringia has also filed a lawsuit with the Cologne Administrative Court against the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks (BImA) as the legal successor to the Federal Agency for Unification-Related Special Tasks (BvS). Together with Saxony, Thuringia has also appealed to the Federal Constitutional Court.
The aim is to get the federal government to share in the costs of the ecological contaminated sites. The environmental policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group, Denny Möller, also called for this. “It cannot be that Thuringia pays unlimited for damages that are of nationwide scope,” said Möller.
The work at a depth of several hundred meters is necessary to prevent the huge cavities from collapsing in the long term – the pits must be kept safe, according to the Higher Administrative Court. “The exemption contract is effective,” the presiding judge Klaus Hinkel emphasized when the verdict was pronounced.