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The town of Herringen, in central Germany, is home to a heap of sodium
chloride (table salt) so massive that it has come to be known as Monte
Kali. It is the world’s largest artificial salt mountain.
The origin of Monte Kali can be traced back to the year 1976, when
potash salt started being extracted from mines around the town of Hessen.
Back then, potash was used to make products like soap and glass, but
today it is an important ingredient in several fertilizers, synthetic
rubber, and even some medicines, so extraction intensified over the last
few decades. The problem with potash is that mining it generates a lot
of sodium chloride as a byproduct, so you need somewhere to store it.
The company operating the mines started dumping all this salt a few
miles from Herringen, and over the years it created a giant salt
mountain locals named Monte Kali or Kalimanjaro (puns for Kalisalz, the
German word for ‘potash’).
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As of 2017, Monte Kali stands at 530 meters (1,740 ft) above sea level
and covers an area of over 100 hectares, so calling it an artificial
mountain is no exaggeration. You can see it from anywhere in Herringen,
or even driving past it on the motorway, and it has become somewhat of a
tourist attraction. In fact, at one point, people could pay to ascend
this giant waste dump, as part of a guided tour. The ascent took the
average person around 15 minutes, and the 23-hectare summit plateau
offered views of the entire Werra Valley all the way to the Rhön and the
Thuringian Forest.
Although it’s hard to estimate how much salt Monte Kali consists of,
most sources we’ve checked put its current mass at approximately 236
million tons. This thing covers an area as large as 114 football fields
and is as heavy as 23,600 Eiffel Towers. And with over 1,000 tonnes of
table salt being added to it every single hour of the day – about 7.2
million tonnes a year – it’s only getting bigger.
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As you can imagine, a salt mountain of this size in the center of
Germany, close to forests and the Werra River, does raise some
environmental questions. Research has found that the growing heap of
salt, which also generates a lot of brine, has caused the Werra to
become salty, as has the groundwater in the area. Of the 60 to 100
species of invertebrates that once called the area around Herringen
home, only 3 remain.
The above could be described as an environmental disaster, but the
potash industry is really big in the region, accounting for several
thousand jobs, so closing down production isn’t really an option for
authorities. Kali und Salz (K+S), the company operating the mines, had
its license extended until 2060, and even had its request to expand
Monte Kali by 25 hectares approved in 2020.
In case you were wondering how K+S manages to dump over 1,000 tonnes of
sodium chloride on Monte Kali every hour, it does with a 1.5 km-long
(0.93 miles) conveyor belt.
Interestingly, Monte Kali is just the largest of several table salt
dumps in the region which has come to be known as “Land der weißen
Berge” (Land of the White Mountains).
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