V a t t e n f a l l - Sweden´s other face

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As a result of brown coal strip-mining and accompanying groundwater depletion, there is, in the Lausitz as a whole, a groundwater deficit of around 10 billion cubic metres. At the Jänschwalde mine between 100 and 120 million cubic metres of groundwater are extracted year for year, to enable strip-mining to function. Of this mine water around 60 million cubic metres are supplied annually – free of charge! – to the VEAG's Jänschwalde power plant [LINK +PHOTO], where it is needed to maintain the cooling circuit. This is just one of a number of ecological subsidies provided for the generation of e lectricity from brown coal.
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The human havoc wrecked by the Jänschwalde strip-mine is lost from sight with the razing of villages. The human tragedy of reduced life expectancy of uprooted old people is played out away from the public gaze, as is the deep trauma of cemetery destruction and reburial.
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Villages yet to be sacrificed, live for decades under the shadow of impending destruction and resettlement. Inclusion in the so-called mining protection area (Bergbauschutzgebiet) – that is, the area designated for strip-mining – means that those villages affected are condemned to exist over a period of years in a state of official neglect. Necessary investment is blocked, badly needed jobs lost. Planning approvals and building permits are withheld.
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Applications for development funds are turned down. In GDR days, entries were made in the land registry, securing properties in the mining-protection area in favour of the state-owned brown coal combine. Years after German reunification, these land registry restrictions still exist, preventing owners from raising money on their properties for the purpose of investment, for example in craft trades and businesses, because the land registry security required by banks for loans is not available. And for those who want to sell out, there is no real property market in the mining protection area, and therefore often only one buyer: the mining company
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There is no binding Brown Coal Plan for the Jänschwalde mine, and therefore no legal basis for the compulsory resettlement on Horno.
The first Brown Coal Plan, approved by the State Government in 1994, was declared to be unconstitutional and thus null and void by the State Constitutional Court in 1995, in a case filed by Horno. The Constitution required a specific law to be enacted for the dissolution of a municipality against the will of its inhabitants, and this law did not exist in the case of Horno.The second Brown Coal Plan for Jänschwalde was approved by the Government in 1998, after the Brandenburg Parliament had enacted the so-called "Horno Law" in June 1997. In June 2000, the State Constitutional Court also declared this second Plan to be unconstitutional and thus null and void, in a case filed by the village of Grießen.
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The Court ruled that the democratic legitimisation of the Brown Coal Committee was inadequate. The implication of this Court ruling for the State Government was devastating. It meant, in effect, that all decisions taken by the Brown Coal Committee since 1992 were unconstitutional. The law governing regional and brown coal planning, and in particular the responsibilities and authority of the Brown Coal Committee had to be amended, and, at least where disputes were pending, new Brown Coal Plans drawn up and approved.
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