February 6, 2021
WITTELSHEIM, FRANCE (AFP) – Miner in eastern France Jean-Pierre Hecht remembers how attractive the idea sounded when he first heard about it: a dying pit could be turned into something useful and environmentally friendly.
Back in the 1990s, the local state mining group MDPA approached the community in the town of Wittelsheim in Alsace with an idea for stocking hazardous waste in a nearby potash mine.
“The pitch was all about how we were going to store the waste, hoping to see some research institute one day come up with a way to neutralise it permanently,” Hecht told
AFP.
But the project, known as Stocamine, ended up poisoning local community relations, led to court cases, convictions and fears that it has resulted in the creation of a toxic timebomb beneath the surface.