Monte Kali and Kalimanjaro are local colloquial names for the spoil heap or

spoil tip A spoil tip (also called a boney pile, culm bank, gob pile, waste tip or bing) is a pile built of accumulated ''spoil'' – waste material removed during mining. These waste materials are typically composed of shale, as well as smaller quant ...

that towers over the town of

Heringen Heringen (Werra) is a small town in Hersfeld-Rotenburg district in eastern Hesse, Germany lying right at the boundary with Thuringia. Geography Location The nearest major towns and cities are Bad Hersfeld (28 km to the west), Eisenach ...

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major historic cities are Dar ...

, Germany. It is one of a number of sites where the

K+S KS and variants may refer to: Businesses and organizations * , a German postwar commando frogman force * , a Norwegian type of company * Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities * PenAir, Peninsula Airways, Anchorage, Alaska, US (IA ...

chemical company dumps sodium chloride (common table salt), a byproduct of

potash Potash () includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form.

mining and processing, a major industry in the area. The names are

pun A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...

s of ''Kali'' (shorthand for ', German for "potash") on "

Monte Carlo Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is ...

" and "

Kilimanjaro Mount Kilimanjaro () is a dormant volcano in Tanzania. It has three volcanic cones: Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain above sea level in the world: above sea level and a ...

." The heap lies directly next to the border with the state of

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and lar ...

, and hence next to the former inner German border with what was once

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

The heap rises over above the surrounding land, its summit reaching above sea level. According to the Werra Potash Mining Museum in Heringen, Monte Kali has been in operation since 1976; as of August 2016, it covered and contained approximately 201 million

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...

s of salt, with another 900 tonnes being added every hour and 7.2 million tonnes a year.

Ecological impact

The

Werra The Werra (), a river in central Germany, is the right-bank headwater of the Weser. "Weser" is a synonym in an old dialect of German. The Werra has its source near Eisfeld in southern Thuringia. After the Werra joins the river Fulda in the ...

river has become salty (≥500 mg/L

chloride The chloride ion is the anion (negatively charged ion) Cl−. It is formed when the element chlorine (a halogen) gains an electron or when a compound such as hydrogen chloride is dissolved in water or other polar solvents. Chloride sa ...

at Gerstungen, and 65 mg/L

at Bad Salzungen (measurement of June 2003). The legal limit is at 2,500 mg/L chloride, which is saltier than parts of the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and ...

. The groundwater has become salty as well. The

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

fauna was reduced from 60–100 species to 3. K+S are licensed to keep dumping salt at the facility until 2030.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Hills of Hesse Salt mines in Germany Potash mines Environmental impact of mining Environmental issues in Germany Water in Germany

Kali Kali (; sa, काली, ), also referred to as Mahakali, Bhadrakali, and Kalika ( sa, कालिका), is a Hindu goddess who is considered to be the goddess of ultimate power, time, destruction and change in Shaktism. In this tra ...

Artificial hills