As of: March 16, 2024, 8:33 a.m
By: Josef Ametsbichler, Michael Seeholzer
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Meticulous search for explosives and ammunition: Three employees from the explosive ordnance disposal service searched for weeks in 2022 every excavator bucket in the excavation from the Grafinger Melak for war relics - and found a lot.
© Stefan Roßmann
Clearing a pond: But then a bazooka appears.
Because of you, the city of Grafing, the explosive ordnance disposal service and the disposal company are now fighting in court over costs of 300,000 euros.
Grafing
– A bazooka head that appears unexpectedly is rarely good news.
In the case of the Melak pond in Grafing, which was cleared at great expense in 2022, such a find has been occupying the lawyers of the city of Grafing, the waste disposal company Zosseder and the explosive ordnance disposal service HBS for over a year, which, according to Grafing's mayor Christian Bauer, is in court for around 300,000 Euro argue.
The reason is that a bazooka head appeared on the premises of a waste disposal company in Dresden, which is said to have come from the Grafinger Melak.
The city doesn't want to believe that: "You find something like that when you search it with your hand," says Bauer.
Sifted through the silt by hand - missed the bazooka head?
The town hall boss doesn't believe that
Eyewitnesses who peered into the area at the time saw the following picture for weeks: the men from the explosive ordnance disposal service stood in the mud of the Melak pond, often three abreast, wrapped in yellow protective suits.
Their task was explosive: to manually examine every excavator bucket full of excavated material from the bottom of the pond, which was contaminated with war remnants, ammunition and explosives.
In some cases they meticulously pulled apart the mud with small rakes.
Tens of thousands of carbine cartridges were barely the length of a finger.
They also found larger, more dangerous war relics: a phosphorus bomb, a bazooka and an anti-tank mine.
It had to be blown up twice on site, once with spectacular evacuation measures that aroused national media interest.
There was further legal repercussions because a dog that had apparently run away because of the explosion was run over by a car.
Controversial: This bazooka head, which appeared in a waste disposal company near Dresden, has so far caused additional costs of around 300,000 euros in the Grafing case.
© Archive
Mayor Bauer does not want to speculate on how the precarious find got into the material despite the meticulous search, especially since some possible attempts to explain it are likely to be justifiable - whether contact with foreign material or the introduction of the bazooka head by a third party.
Bauer further emphasizes that this could hardly have come from Melak, citing the witness statements of three people involved in the eviction.
The material, which has been corroding in the mud for decades, is in much worse condition than the find.
This resulted in a cost of 100,000 euros - it required a demolition and a complete re-examination of the material delivered to Dresden for reprocessing.
Why did the material end up in reprocessing?
- Disposer is silent
It should never have ended up there, the mayor further argues, citing emails from the explosive ordnance disposal service, according to which the Grafingen waste was only released for the final landfill, but not for reprocessing - and thus resale;
because of the residual risk of smaller pieces of ammunition or explosive residues.
This raises the question of why the Zosseder company did not take the material to the landfill.
Neither did the explosive ordnance disposal service respond to EZ's request;
both refer to the ongoing legal proceedings.
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According to Bauer, there are also around 200,000 euros in storage costs that Zosseder has incurred to date for some of the material, around 700 tons.
Several thousand euros a week because the soil is too risky to transport.
Undisputed: A corroded bazooka head, recovered from the silt of the Grafinger Melak by the explosive ordnance disposal service in 2022.
© Stefan Roßmann
Comparison is not an option for the city: “We are between two chairs”
In the coming weeks, the court will decide whether that is true and, if so, who is to blame.
The city does not want to accept a settlement that was discussed there and will appeal if necessary.
“We are between two chairs,” says Bauer, who sees no responsibility at the town hall.
Incidentally, the accumulated disposal costs of around 620,000 euros are legally undisputed.
A cost shock for the city of Grafing, where before the first ordnance was discovered they had only expected a high five-figure euro amount.
Here too, Bauer is confident about his city coffers.
According to its responsibility, the federal government will probably have to bear “a large part, actually almost all” of the costs of disposing of war weapons.
Referring to the ongoing process, the town hall boss says: “But you never know.”
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