Germany: Unexploded Bombs Pose Threat to Offshore Wind Farms

Old munitions from the Second World War are polluting the German coast thus posing a threat to the offshore wind farm developers, writes DW.

“There are some one point 6 million tons of munitions in German seas,” according to Bernd Scherer, who is responsible for marine protection at the Schleswig-Holstein’s Environment Ministry.

After the war ended, all types of ships were dumping the ammunition at the dumping areas.

Boskalis Hirdes is a company that is cleaning the route for an undersea cable which will connect an offshore wind farm off the East Frisian island of Borkum to the grid. They are safely disposing of the unexploded bombs.

Technical director, Jan Kölbel said: “We expected around 50 targets on a route length of more or less 45 kilometres, and now we found more than 2,000.”

 [mappress]

Offshore WIND staff, November 08, 2012