Emma-Hendrik coal dump, Brunssum, Limburg, Netherlandsi

Regional Level Types
Emma-Hendrik coal dump	Coal Dump
Brunssum	Municipality
Limburg	Province
Netherlands	Country

Dumps of the two former coal mines, Hendrik and Emma.

The "Steenberg Emma-Hendrik" is an artificial hill and former coal dump in the Dutch municipality of Brunssum. The hill was originally the joint dump of the Staatsmijn Emma (https://www.mindat.org/loc-68183.html) and Staatsmijn Hendrik (https://www.mindat.org/loc-193675.html).

The hill is located in the east of the municipality near the German border.
In the north and east, the hill is bordered by the Waubacherweg, in the south by the Rimburgerweg and in the west by the Zwanenpool street.
To the east of the hill is the Teverener Heide, and to the southeast the golf course of Golf Club Brunssummerheide.
To the south is the Brunssummerheide, to the southwest the NATO base Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum and the Schuttersveld district, to the west the Schutterspark and to the northwest the Bouwberg industrial estate.

The Roode Beek flows west and southwest, and the stream and the hill are in the Roode Beek Basin.

The Parkstad Limburg Outer Ring runs partly over the hill.

From 1911 and 1915, construction began on the coal mines Staatsmijn Emma and Staatsmijn Hendrik, which were used to mine the coal layers of the South Limburg coal basin. This extraction created unusable waste rock which was transported via the mine tracks from Emma and Hendrik to the joint dump, where waste rock was dumped since 1914.

After the Mauritsberg coal dump of the Staatsmijn Maurits (https://www.mindat.org/loc-193674.html), the Emma-Hendrik coal dump was the largest in Dutch South Limburg.

In the southwest, the Roode Beek was covered for 300 meters, over which part of the coal dump came to lie.

Before 1950, several landslides occurred on the dump that were the result of clay lenses in the sand layers in the subsurface. This was prevented by constructing the dump in two stages.

Staatsmijn Hendrik closed in 1966 and Staatsmijn Emma in 1973.

In 1968, a fire occurred on the dump, in which waste burned uncontrollably. After extinguishing the fire, it turned out that heating or combustion was still taking place in the soil. To limit this, a company was commissioned in 1973 to excavate approximately 100,000 tons of mine waste and thus contain the fire. This excavation ended in April 1974.

In 1985, the dump had a surface area of ​​approximately 200 hectares (ca. 494 acres), a height of 25 meters (ca. 82 ft) and a mass of 72 million metric tons. The hill has a plateau shape and on it are buildings of a brick factory and NATO.

In mid-1991, Steenbergafgraving BV started excavating (part of) the dump.

For decades, the dump formed an ecological bottleneck between the Brunssummerheide and the Schutterspark. To remove this barrier, part of the dump was excavated on its southwest edge and the cover of the Roode Beek was removed. A total of 450,000 m³ (ca. 15,891 ft³) of contaminated mine waste was excavated. Since 2016, the stream has been able to meander freely above ground again for the first time in about 100 years. With this project, a 90-metre-long bridge was built over the stream valley 14 metres above the valley floor. South of the Rembrandtstraat, on the edge of the Brunssummerheide, was the settling pond of the Staatsmijn Hendrik, the Terca site. As part of this project, the settling pond was remediated and the excavated mine waste was used to fill the former settling pond.

Other Databases

Wikipedia:	https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steenberg_Emma-Hendrik
Wikidata ID:	Q113458576

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References