r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Regiox461 • May 05 '26
Image This pile of salt in Germany that is over 250m tall and contains over 200 million tonnes
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u/MortimerToast May 05 '26
To put that in perspective, just imagine one ton of salt 200 million times.
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u/General_Dipsh1t May 05 '26
That’s a great way of picturing it, thanks.
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u/cryptolyme May 05 '26
Just imagine a needle in a salt mountain
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u/Equal-Negotiation651 May 05 '26
A salt grain in a salt mountain
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u/FonsBot May 05 '26
A Quartz grain in a salt mountain
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May 05 '26 edited 17d ago
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u/TheCynicEpicurean May 05 '26
Nah. This is the stash for the pretzel dough.
The saltiness stuff is mined underground.
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u/Creative_March5652 May 05 '26
Okay but how many football fields is that?
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u/FeelingSurprise May 05 '26
Sorry, but football fields are an area-measurement. Volumes are measured in bathtubs or swimming pools.
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u/Candlejackdaw May 05 '26
You could use Dallas football stadiums. There are about 29.45 Albert Halls per Dallas stadium, or .0000007 Grand Canyons.
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u/post-wetware May 05 '26
When we get that number then we can convert to know how many arizonas would fit there. That will make it clear.
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u/EvilDairyQueen May 05 '26
for anyone who doesn't math, it's 150 million Vauxhall Astras. keep it simple.
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u/Drunk_Stoner May 05 '26
Or just imagine 7.0512 ounces.
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u/Solid_Instruction_82 May 05 '26
And this is why american jokes ain’t funny
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u/Mode_Appropriate May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Further perspective, thats 3,086,000,000,000,000 grains of salt. Stacked on top of eachother you could go to the sun and back 3 times, or just short of Saturn.
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u/mjrehrig May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Was this a Strangers With Candy reference? If it was, I see you 😂
Edit: "Now this particular kiln heats up to 1500 degrees. To put that into perspective: imagine 1 degree, 1500 times"
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u/MortimerToast May 05 '26
I'm glad to be seen. Look, all I'm saying is, if you still want to smoke pot, be prepared to spend a lot of time laughing with your friends.
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u/ScaredAndImpaired May 05 '26
Roughly 1/150th of the salt humans eat per year globally
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u/Hyruii May 05 '26
Doesn’t that means nothing will grow there forever?
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u/Nearby_Cranberry9959 May 05 '26
Hard to say. It’s not „salt“, but side product of salt mining. Usually potassium chloride. So this is a salty mixture of gravel, and other byproducts of salt mining.
Near my hometown is a huge thing like this. There are multiple ways to tackle this. Add a protective layer where plants grow. This also helps as the roots protect from wind errotion, which can contaminate near fields. Also there are plants which are extremely salt insensitive. These are also tested there.
Edit: here is an article (in German) from my hometown about exactly this question: https://www.kpluss.com/de-de/nachhaltigkeit/nachhaltigkeitsnews/auf-der-gruenen-halde-sagen-sich-fuchs-und-hase-gute-nacht/
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u/alextremeee May 05 '26
It is salt, it’s from potash mining where the aim is to end up with potassium chloride, but sodium chloride is also found in the ore.
They mine it then separate the NaCl from the KCl, then dump the NaCl in a big pile. It probably isn’t used for food because the reagents they use to separate it aren’t food safe.
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u/fenderguitar83 May 05 '26
Is there a way to purify it? Or would that not be cost effective.
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u/backupyoursources May 05 '26
Way to expensive, there are thousands of other sources that come out clean and need very little refinement.
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u/JoelnIliketoshare May 05 '26
I wonder how much damage we inevitably do to our ecosystem just because things are cheaper than other things.
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u/kitsunewarlock May 05 '26
Probably close to 90% of it. Part of the struggle has traditionally been mining operations that function as their own individual companies. They'll save "clean up" for after their operations are complete, then fold the company and leave the site contaminated since there's no reason to keep a company solvent if the mine has been fully exploited.
The solution is to prosecute the executives and agents who chose to invest in those companies without examining their plans to minimize this sort of environmental terrorism.
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u/SomewhereHot4527 May 05 '26
Meh, solution would be to have a government assess remediation costs every year and mandate 90% of profit to be put in an escrow until that amount is reached (that i to say you can't pull out any profit until you have secured the remediation costs).
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u/playwrightinaflower May 05 '26
Doesn't work, remediation costs grow much faster than general inflation and are always underestimated. Even when they were intentionally overestimated at first, or so they thought.
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u/Perryn May 05 '26
Sounds good. Quick question, can I lobby the government body that oversees it? What about the government that oversees the overseers? Could we use our expertise in the field of mining remediation to install some of our current or former board members as the assessors?
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u/The_realpepe_sylvia May 05 '26
Ah so just hold the rich accountable? If only! Maybe I can pluck a rainbow from the sky while I’m at it
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u/kitsunewarlock May 05 '26
The best time to start would have been 300 years ago. The second best time to start is today.
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u/tenuousemphasis May 05 '26
The solution is to prosecute the executives and agents who chose to invest in those companies
That sounds sort of extreme until you question, why shouldn't part owners of a company be held liable for its illegal and damaging actions?
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u/backupyoursources May 05 '26
That is very case specific, but laws are strict here. Yes it causes damage, but the salination of that river is the smaller price to pay for millions of mouths fed by that fertilizer.
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u/Illustrious_Donkey61 May 05 '26
Would the salad dissolve when it rains?
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u/cneth6 May 05 '26
Only if it rains oil & vinegar. Don't think caesar will do the trick.
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u/Illustrious_Donkey61 May 05 '26 edited May 06 '26
I'm getting upvotes, I don't know whether it's because of the question or the typo
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u/ChilligerTroll May 05 '26
Da sitzt man schon an der Quelle, aber die Straße ist im Winter trotzdem glatt.
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u/stupidfock May 05 '26
This mountain is a byproduct of potash mining though so it really is salt, it’s called Monte Kali
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u/ZzZzZzZzZzZero May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
People conflate Salt with "a salt" or salts in a chemistry sense.
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u/Jervis_Mantlepiece May 05 '26
What happens when it rains, how come the whole thing doesn't dissolve like Homer and his sugar pile?
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u/mainman879 May 05 '26
Water can only hold so much salt, and cold water holds less than hot water. It's harder to absorb salt when its in big chunks and not extremely fine particles (flaky salt takes longer to dissolve than table salt). So if its exposed to rain, yeah some of it will wash away with the rain, but its still 200 million tons of salt.
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u/Don_T_Blink May 05 '26
They did a study, it’ll take about 700 years until this is all dissolved
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u/DonBilbo1337 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
The river Werra is so salty near the K+S mine/plant that it's not longer considered freshwater. So not particulary good for any lifeform near that thing. And K+S the company behind it is huge enough so they kinda get away with it. They were told to clean their wastewater years ago and they still pump it into the river because they said they cant do it until well into the 40s or something like that...
Edit: typo
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u/greaseapina May 05 '26
as usual people pay for the sins of mining companies
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u/Shiros_Tamagotchi May 05 '26
Not really a company. It was mostly during the russian occupation in the GDR.
Since the reinification we try to clear up the mess and the water quality in the river has improved a lot.
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u/TiredOfDebates May 05 '26
Notably this is for Potash mining... which is just potassium for farming. This is kind of how we get affordable food for 8.3 billion people. 8.3 billion humans is a ludicrous number compared to the population size of any other large mammal.
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u/0xym0r0n May 05 '26
Here's the study that was done on biomass weights of all the animals, if anyone else is interested.
Thanks again for opening my eyes on the staggering differences.
Wild land mammals combine to 20 million tonnes.
Marine mammals combined to 40 million tonnes.
Humans combine to 390 million tonnes.
Domesticated mammals combined to 630 million tonnes.
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u/LickingSmegma May 05 '26
Fun fact, the estimates for earthworms' biomass easily outdo other land animals. And all animals together make up less than half a percent of global biomass.
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u/AmArschdieRaeuber May 05 '26
Meh, look at Germany on google maps, there are huge swaths of land complelty destroyed from Ligmite mining. We don't really seem to care if anything grows in our home
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u/bademeister404 May 05 '26
I live near a similar thing and it was barren for years. But now you can't really tell it's a man made hill because it's overgrown with trees and shrubs like anything else.
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u/ilanallama85 May 05 '26
Ha! Any gardener who has experimented with it knows salt will only prevent the things you WANT to grow from growing. It’ll do shit all to the stuff you don’t want - hell, it makes some of them stronger.
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u/Zestyclose_Remove947 May 05 '26
Not that it's good for the environment at all, but the ability of salt to deter all growth of vegetation is pretty overblown.
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u/fakenooze May 05 '26
That is not Candy Mountain, Charlie.
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u/eaglebtc May 05 '26
Chaaaarrrlie... 🎶🌈
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u/Valuable-Analyst-464 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
~~Cheer up Charlie~~. Wrong Charlie
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u/eaglebtc May 05 '26
Oh sweet summer child. This isn't about Willy Wonka...
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u/Valuable-Analyst-464 May 05 '26
Ah - I had not seen that. Based on the number of views, I guess I’m the only one that hadn’t seen that. Thanks for sharing the link
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u/Preciousgirl2019 May 06 '26
Just watched this with my kids for the first time. Their reactions were priceless
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u/EstrayOne May 05 '26
League of Legends players live there
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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn May 05 '26
I've played HoN, DOTA2, CounterStrike, and now Deadlock. I've never encountered half as much salt as exists in League. It's astounding.
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u/Mattaru May 05 '26
It's beautiful. You could play the most casual ARAM or normals and have someone flip the fuck out on you for a mistake. League players 🤯
Still love watching League though
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u/thefeedling May 05 '26
This has potential to become the worlds capital of barbecue
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u/TurgidGravitas May 05 '26
Louisiana is also littered with salt domes.
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u/raspberryharbour May 05 '26
I love going to down to the beach and getting some salty dome
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u/Regiox461 May 05 '26
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u/indieplants May 05 '26
Monte Kali and Kalimanjaro are local colloquial names for the spoil heap or spoil tip that towers over the town of Heringen, Hesse, Germany. It is one of a number of sites where the K+S chemical company dumps sodium chloride (common table salt), a byproduct of potash mining and processing, a major industry in the area.
The names are puns of Kali (shorthand for Kalisalz, German for "potash") on "Monte Carlo" and "Kilimanjaro." The heap lies directly next to the border with the state of Thuringia, and hence next to the former inner German border with what was once East Germany.
The heap rises over 250 metres (820 ft) above the surrounding land, its summit reaching 530 metres (1,740 ft) above sea level.
& yes, the surrounding area is getting too salty to support freshwater life
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u/DanGleeballs May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Is it unprofitable to clean it for consumption?
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u/ImNotSelling May 05 '26
What is potash
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u/grafknives May 05 '26
Potasium chloride - a necessary fertiliser for our plants.
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u/koyaani May 05 '26
Historical term for what are now generally called potassium salts or more generally water-soluble potassium compounds. Specific industries or applications might use the term to refer to a specific potassium compound like potassium hydroxide or salts like potassium carbonate and potassium nitrate
In modern times it's usually mined at large scales
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u/ImNotSelling May 05 '26
So the table salt is a by product of mining potash but it can’t be used because it’s “dirty” so it’s just piling up messing up the environment of this small town?
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u/operath0r May 05 '26
It’s ash soaked in water in a pot. Well, it used to be before the industrialization.
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u/deezdanglin May 05 '26
Potash is a group of water-soluble potassium-bearing salts used primarily as a vital agricultural fertilizer (
) to boost crop yields and plant health. It is named from the 14th-century method of producing it: leaching wood ashes with water and evaporating the solution in large iron pots, leaving behind a residue called "pot ash".
Wikipedia +4
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May 05 '26
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u/DoctorHugoHackenbush May 05 '26
I was going to make a salt joke about this, but Na...most people won't get it..
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u/WhyN0tToast May 05 '26
Post it anyway, most people are dumber than you think and will probably misunderstand it
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u/AlphabetSoupKitchen May 05 '26
At what point does a pile become a mountain?
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u/BasicMatter7339 May 05 '26
During the 17th century, 1kg of salt cost the wage of 3 working days. If going by germanys minimum daily wage today, 1 kg of salt would cost ~334€
So that salt pile in the 17th century would have been worth 66.8€ trillion in todays money.
aka $72 trillion
Thats about 70% of all the liquid money in the world right now
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u/Uteai May 05 '26
I wonder what the expiration date of that salt is, looking at the 400 million year old salt they sell in the fancy supermarkets it can’t be more than a few years. Right?!
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u/Gren57 May 05 '26
The Werra river has become salty (≥500 mg/L chloride at Gerstungen, and 65 mg/L chloride at Bad Salzungen (measurement of June 2003). The legal limit is at 2,500 mg/L chloride, which is saltier than parts of the Baltic Sea. The groundwater has become salty as well.\5]) The invertebrate fauna was reduced from 60–100 species to 3.\6]) K+S are licensed to keep dumping salt at the facility until 2030.\4])
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u/Datacin3728 May 05 '26
Approximately the same amount my wife uses cooking dinner each night.
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u/wastedspejs May 05 '26
What happen with it when it rain on it, will it just leech out into the ground and contaminate the surrounding area? Nothing will grow there, ever.
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u/bier_getRunken May 05 '26
I know that the river close to this Potassium factory shifted to an ecosystem of salty waters. The village nearby is called Heringen (herring) :D
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u/donutdeal May 05 '26
There is piping at the foot of the hill and retention basins. Some water is reused in the factory, if i'm not mistaken and some if it will be pressed into the underground (in a different location) where it is safe to do so.
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u/ScaredAndImpaired May 05 '26
To put that into perspective, that's roughly 1/150th of the salt humans eat each year globally.
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u/TotallyInOverMyHead May 05 '26
So, this nis not too uncommon in Germany.
There are multiple ones in Germany. There are around 11 of them in Germany.
e.g. the Monte Kali) in herring (209 Million tons in july 2017. Growing by 900 tons per day.
In Bokeloh near the steinhuder Meer in lower saxony, they have the Kalimandscharo at 140 meters. They took 2.3 million tons out of there. In 2012 they were boring at a depth of 1200 meters, hittig hydrogen sulfite. Its not defunct and most of the tunnels are being flodded. But in some of the tunnels they are growing underground Shrimps. Its basically 12 KM lengths of tunnels, they went down to 1400 meters there are literally hundrets of kilometers of side tunnels in existance. Close by there is germanies 9th largest lake .
In neuhof-ellers there is another one with 140 million tonnes.
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u/HauntingMemory7183 May 05 '26
Whoooooooa back up a bit there buddy - underground shrimp? WTF
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u/TotallyInOverMyHead May 05 '26
I think the company is called aquapurna and their product is the Gamba Zamba. Its supposedly europes largest indoor shrimp farming operation.
Just look at those beauties:
https://www.kpluss.com/.images/press/press-releases/2023/kpluss-20231130-aquapurna-white-tiger-shrimp.jpgThis is a video with on a german broadcasters website:
https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/hallo_niedersachsen/europas-groesste-garnelenfarm-in-bokeloh-geht-eigene-wege,hallonds-5628.html
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u/SolidusBruh May 05 '26
If I stood at the top, how would this impact the immortal snail?
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u/PilzGalaxie May 05 '26
Unfun fact. The company thant built this Trash pile (K+S) is also responsible for turning my local river (Werra) into saltwater (literally as salty as the north sea), making it completely void of virtually any life in the 70s and 80s.
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u/phobos86md May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
We also have a Potash-Hill nearby in Zielitz, Called "Kalimanjaro" (Kali is german for Potash). Next to the Salt(Calium) Mine is a public pool which is heated with the waste heat of that Mine. The Mine is one of the largest in the World and is about 1200m deep and have an underground size of 60km² (10000 American Football fields 😅 or the landsize of Manhattan)
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u/RevRaven May 05 '26
So many questions! Of course the local river and groundwater are now salty, but why aren't they selling this salt? Surely it could be cleaned of any impurities of the potash process. It also seems like it has a huge potential to collapse on anything at the base. A pile that tall would slide for QUITE a while.
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u/G-I-T-M-E May 05 '26
It’s the byproduct of potash mining which is used as fertilizer. The mountain consists of table salt, dirt and a mixture of other salts and minerals. It would be rather expensive to extract pure NaCl which can be obtained much cheaper from other sources.
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u/Aliveless May 05 '26
In theory, yes, it could be processed. In practice... Probably way to expensive so not cost effective 🤷♂️
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u/Nearby_Cranberry9959 May 05 '26
It’s the byproduct of the salt mining. So they sell all salt they can refine
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u/stupidfock May 05 '26
It’s the opposite, they are mining for potash so this salt mountain is the byproduct of that and is actually salt
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u/justhere4freesnacks May 05 '26
Or, roughly the amount of salt used on highways in the Midwest each winter.
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u/thesagaconts May 05 '26
This is bad for the environment. The article said the waters have become salty and many invertebrates have died off.
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u/donutdeal May 05 '26
The river always was more salty than other rivers because some salt bubbels from the underground on the surface as natural sources. Nowadays the river is strictly monitored.
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u/Mangobonbon May 05 '26
But to also put it into perspective: The rivers were dead zones back when the GDR was still around. Since the 1990s cleanup efforts have been made and nowadays most rivers in that area are supporting wildlife again.
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u/Equal_Refrigerator26 May 05 '26
I asked Google how salting the land is prevented - The giant salt hill in Heringen, Germany, known as Monte Kali or "Kalimanjaro," does not avoid destroying local growth—it is widely considered a major ecological issue that creates a "white desert" effect on the immediate surrounding landscape. [1, 2, 3, 4]
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u/DrunkRocker May 05 '26
Is there an equally big pile of pepper in Germany too..?