Post by kaima on Aug 13, 2009 10:59:19 GMT -7
This is a universal problem, one faced by Poland, Europe and the USA. This is one of many stories, leaving a deadly legacy for future generations:
FAULENSEE, Switzerland — Kurt Klopfenstein has been fishing the waters off this Alpine village for over 30 years, but the object he dug out of his nets not long ago, in among the whitefish, perch, trout and pike, was like nothing he had ever pulled out before. A hand grenade, slimy to the touch but easily recognizable. “I gingerly tossed it back overboard,” he said, setting his nets from his rocking rowboat one recent evening.
It is a wonder a catch like Mr. Klopfenstein’s does not happen more often around here. For in the decades following World War II, the Swiss dumped more than 9,000 tons of munitions into the deep waters of Lake Thun, which stretch out placidly from this village.
Neutral Switzerland stockpiled the munitions — artillery shells, hand grenades, ordinary bullets and other ordnance — during the war in the event of an invasion by Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, which never came about. Some caches included matériel seized from trains crossing from Germany into Italy in violation of neutrality agreements.
In the years up to 1964 the munitions were disposed of by simply dumping them into at least four Alpine lakes, with Lake Thun, an 11-mile-long body of water that is 700 feet deep in places, getting by far the lion’s share, at least 9,020 tons.
Four years ago, a local member of the national Parliament, Ursula Haller, entered a motion that, if accepted, would have forced the federal government to remove them. “There was concern about what would happen if there was corrosion, so that toxic material would get into the water,” Ms. Haller, 60, said recently. The munitions-laden lakes, including Lake Thun, she added, supply drinking water to about 700,000 people.
But Defense Department officials from nearby Bern, the capital, argued that it would be too dangerous to remove them and too costly, if a method were used that involved blowing the accumulated sediment off the munitions, then freezing them in blocks of ice and lifting them.
In 2006, Parliament rejected Ms. Haller’s motion and has since pursued a policy of wait and watch. Even Ms. Haller now prefers to avoid the topic. “This is a beautiful region,” she said. “It would be a shame to damage its image.”
Switzerland is not the only European country with underwater ordnance. Neutral Sweden similarly stockpiled munitions during the war, and until it stopped in 1969 it had dumped more than 6,500 shells into one of its largest lakes, where they remain. The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union dumped more than 300,000 tons of munitions, including stocks of poisonous mustard gas they had confiscated in Germany, into the Baltic Sea, where the weapons also remain.
But for the orderly Swiss, the munitions in Lake Thun, for all the denial of problems, are a kind of unsightly lump under the national carpet.
There has never been an explosion, and experts agree the lake’s waters are about the cleanest in Switzerland. Yet the munitions have stayed in the public eye around Lake Thun for another reason. About a decade ago, commercial fishermen began to notice a deformation of the reproductive organs of the whitefish, which for generations were their bread-and-butter catch.
Some speculated that chemicals leaching from the dumped munitions were the cause of the undersize organs; others blamed chemicals used for blasting a nearby tunnel through the Alps, which then seeped into the lake.
Christoph Kung, an expert at the government Fisheries Inspectorate, said most recent studies have shown that the lake’s plankton, on which the whitefish feed, are causing the deformities, though studies have not shown what is affecting the plankton. “We did a separate project on munitions,” he added, “but no negative effect could be proven.”
Ask local fishermen about the submerged bombs and they will immediately change the subject and talk of the sewage treatment plants that handle waste from the dozen or so villages and towns that dot the shores of Lake Thun.
“Our haul is only 10 percent of what it was in the late 1970s,” before the treatment plants were built, said Mr. Klopfenstein, 61, who fishes the lake with his wife, Edith. “Before the treatment plants, when the restaurants cleaned up, all the sauces with their flour base went into the lake,” he said. “Fish love that!”
Despite his encounter with the hand grenade, he prefers that the munitions be left undisturbed. “For sure, they’re not a danger,” he said. “They lie on the bottom and each year more sediment covers them.”
But like many hereabouts, he also sees them as a symptom of the growing complication of life on the lake, with its expanding population and spreading habitation, as new homes, some contemporary, most copies of traditional chalets, climb the hills from the shoreline.
“The entire modernization of the Alps is perhaps contributing,” said Markus A. Jegerlehner, a photo shop owner whose family has had a lakeside home for generations, when asked about the lake, its fish and its munitions.
A few miles up the shore from Faulensee, Hans Sieber, 48, agreed with Mr. Klopfenstein. “In the old days, every village butcher gathered the blood and animal parts and poured them into the village stream, which poured into the lake.” Such waste, no longer available, was welcome food for the fish, he said. Once, as many as 40 fishermen worked the lake; today, he is one of 6.
Mr. Sieber, who gave up a career as a chef 30 years ago to take up the family fishing business, does not want the treatment plants shut down any more than he wants the munitions dug up. Far more people live around the lake now than before sewage was treated, he said, and far more chemicals — detergents, cleansers, creams — enrich the village waste now than they did then.
Still, in addition to catching fish, he also breeds them, about eight million fry a year to help nature replenish the supply, and the mystery surrounding the deformed fish troubles him. “The only thing clear is that the whitefish has become the most thoroughly studied species of fish anywhere,” he said. “We’ve even done genetic studies.”
Yet for the moment, the supply of fish is sufficient, and the deformed whitefish can be safely eaten. “You don’t eat the innards,” Mr. Sieber said.
FAULENSEE, Switzerland — Kurt Klopfenstein has been fishing the waters off this Alpine village for over 30 years, but the object he dug out of his nets not long ago, in among the whitefish, perch, trout and pike, was like nothing he had ever pulled out before. A hand grenade, slimy to the touch but easily recognizable. “I gingerly tossed it back overboard,” he said, setting his nets from his rocking rowboat one recent evening.
It is a wonder a catch like Mr. Klopfenstein’s does not happen more often around here. For in the decades following World War II, the Swiss dumped more than 9,000 tons of munitions into the deep waters of Lake Thun, which stretch out placidly from this village.
Neutral Switzerland stockpiled the munitions — artillery shells, hand grenades, ordinary bullets and other ordnance — during the war in the event of an invasion by Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, which never came about. Some caches included matériel seized from trains crossing from Germany into Italy in violation of neutrality agreements.
In the years up to 1964 the munitions were disposed of by simply dumping them into at least four Alpine lakes, with Lake Thun, an 11-mile-long body of water that is 700 feet deep in places, getting by far the lion’s share, at least 9,020 tons.
Four years ago, a local member of the national Parliament, Ursula Haller, entered a motion that, if accepted, would have forced the federal government to remove them. “There was concern about what would happen if there was corrosion, so that toxic material would get into the water,” Ms. Haller, 60, said recently. The munitions-laden lakes, including Lake Thun, she added, supply drinking water to about 700,000 people.
But Defense Department officials from nearby Bern, the capital, argued that it would be too dangerous to remove them and too costly, if a method were used that involved blowing the accumulated sediment off the munitions, then freezing them in blocks of ice and lifting them.
In 2006, Parliament rejected Ms. Haller’s motion and has since pursued a policy of wait and watch. Even Ms. Haller now prefers to avoid the topic. “This is a beautiful region,” she said. “It would be a shame to damage its image.”
Switzerland is not the only European country with underwater ordnance. Neutral Sweden similarly stockpiled munitions during the war, and until it stopped in 1969 it had dumped more than 6,500 shells into one of its largest lakes, where they remain. The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union dumped more than 300,000 tons of munitions, including stocks of poisonous mustard gas they had confiscated in Germany, into the Baltic Sea, where the weapons also remain.
But for the orderly Swiss, the munitions in Lake Thun, for all the denial of problems, are a kind of unsightly lump under the national carpet.
There has never been an explosion, and experts agree the lake’s waters are about the cleanest in Switzerland. Yet the munitions have stayed in the public eye around Lake Thun for another reason. About a decade ago, commercial fishermen began to notice a deformation of the reproductive organs of the whitefish, which for generations were their bread-and-butter catch.
Some speculated that chemicals leaching from the dumped munitions were the cause of the undersize organs; others blamed chemicals used for blasting a nearby tunnel through the Alps, which then seeped into the lake.
Christoph Kung, an expert at the government Fisheries Inspectorate, said most recent studies have shown that the lake’s plankton, on which the whitefish feed, are causing the deformities, though studies have not shown what is affecting the plankton. “We did a separate project on munitions,” he added, “but no negative effect could be proven.”
Ask local fishermen about the submerged bombs and they will immediately change the subject and talk of the sewage treatment plants that handle waste from the dozen or so villages and towns that dot the shores of Lake Thun.
“Our haul is only 10 percent of what it was in the late 1970s,” before the treatment plants were built, said Mr. Klopfenstein, 61, who fishes the lake with his wife, Edith. “Before the treatment plants, when the restaurants cleaned up, all the sauces with their flour base went into the lake,” he said. “Fish love that!”
Despite his encounter with the hand grenade, he prefers that the munitions be left undisturbed. “For sure, they’re not a danger,” he said. “They lie on the bottom and each year more sediment covers them.”
But like many hereabouts, he also sees them as a symptom of the growing complication of life on the lake, with its expanding population and spreading habitation, as new homes, some contemporary, most copies of traditional chalets, climb the hills from the shoreline.
“The entire modernization of the Alps is perhaps contributing,” said Markus A. Jegerlehner, a photo shop owner whose family has had a lakeside home for generations, when asked about the lake, its fish and its munitions.
A few miles up the shore from Faulensee, Hans Sieber, 48, agreed with Mr. Klopfenstein. “In the old days, every village butcher gathered the blood and animal parts and poured them into the village stream, which poured into the lake.” Such waste, no longer available, was welcome food for the fish, he said. Once, as many as 40 fishermen worked the lake; today, he is one of 6.
Mr. Sieber, who gave up a career as a chef 30 years ago to take up the family fishing business, does not want the treatment plants shut down any more than he wants the munitions dug up. Far more people live around the lake now than before sewage was treated, he said, and far more chemicals — detergents, cleansers, creams — enrich the village waste now than they did then.
Still, in addition to catching fish, he also breeds them, about eight million fry a year to help nature replenish the supply, and the mystery surrounding the deformed fish troubles him. “The only thing clear is that the whitefish has become the most thoroughly studied species of fish anywhere,” he said. “We’ve even done genetic studies.”
Yet for the moment, the supply of fish is sufficient, and the deformed whitefish can be safely eaten. “You don’t eat the innards,” Mr. Sieber said.