Army ammo dumped in Swiss lakes presents no water quality risk
Sometimes whole cases were dropped overboard, or individual ammo was thrown into the water.
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The defence ministry says the thousands of tons of old Second World War bombs, grenades and other explosives that lie at the bottom of Swiss lakes have not affected water quality.
In its latest environmental monitoring report publishedExternal link on Tuesday, the defence ministry said sediment samples tested from lakes Thun, Brienz, Lucerne and Walen in 2019 had not revealed any “negative impact of submerged munitions on water quality”. Similar results were observed in 2016.
Between 1948 and 1967, the army dumped an estimated 8,120 tonnes of munitionsExternal link in lakes Thun, Lucerne, Brienz and Walen. Private firms also got rid of munitions in Lake Zurich, the Rotsee near Lucerne and Lake Geneva.
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Unexploded munitions continue to reverberate in Switzerland
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Old Second World War bombs, grenades and other explosives are still causing headaches for the Swiss authorities.
The idea of disposing of the piles of old dangerous ordinance by submerging it in Swiss lakes first started in the 1920s, but quickly gathered pace after the Second World War when Switzerland found itself with huge stock of unused weapons and ammunitions on its hands.
Alerted to potential risks, from 2005-2010 the authorities stepped up monitoring and investigations in lakes. Since 2012, regular field reports and tests of sediment and water samples have reached similar conclusions: there is no pollution to lakes monitored by the federal authorities. Bringing up old shells and other munitions would be a risky exercise for the local population and contractors, with possible environmental damage also a concern.
For its most recent tests, the defence ministry extracted 1.5-metre-long sediment samples from the lake floors and tested them for explosive substances such as nitroglycerin as well as heavy metals like lead and mercury.
The concentration of harmful substances did not reach established thresholds for the vast majority of the sediment samples, the ministry said. Small traces of explosives from the submerged ammunition were registered in just a handful of the samples.
In the future, the defence ministry plans to continue monitoring the munitions once every ten years and lake water quality will be tested every five years.
Last year, the Geneva authorities announced that they planned to launch a study into the munitions that were dumped in the lake between 1950-1970 not far from the city centre by a private firm Hispano-Suizo.
In February, 170 residents of the village of Mitholz, canton Bern, were told to leave their homes for a decade to allow the authorities to clear 3,500 tons of munitions at a nearby underground dump.
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Unexploded munitions under the Alps are a ticking time bomb
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Hundreds of people will have to leave their village for over a decade while tonnes of Second World War ammunition and explosives are cleared.
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No clearance of former munitions stockpile in sight
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In July 2018, residents of the mountain village were shocked to find out that an ammunition storage site that had exploded 70 years earlier, could still present a danger to the public. The people who live here feel that action isn’t being taken quickly enough, and they’re worried about the future. (SRF/swissinfo.ch)
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The government environment agency has confirmed that a former ammunition stockpile at Mitholz is an unacceptable risk for the local population.
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The ministry’s latest environmental impact survey drew the same conclusions as predecessors in 2008 and 2012 – namely that the munitions were not leaking and the water contained toxins of such minute levels that the water is safe to drink. In 2012, it concluded that it is better to leave the munitions where they are…
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