In the town of Herringen, Central Germany, there is a huge pile of sodium chloride (table salt), so large that it is called Monte Potassium. This is the largest man-made salt mountain in the world.
The origins of Monte Potassium can be traced back to 1976, when potassium salts began to be extracted from the mines around the town of Hessen. Earlier, potassium was used to make products like soap and glass, but today it is an important ingredient in some fertilizers, synthetic rubber and even some medicines, because So over the past few decades, mining has increased.
The problem is that mining for potassium produces a lot of sodium chloride , as a by-product, so somewhere to store it is needed. At that time, the company that operated the potash mines began to consider pouring all this salt into the same location a few kilometers from Herringen.
Then, over the years, they created a giant mountain of salt that the locals named Monte Kali or Kalimanjaro (a play on the word Kalisalz, which means ‘potassium’ in German).
The giant salt mountain of Monte Kali.
As of 2017, Monte Kali has reached an altitude of 530 meters above sea level and covers an area of more than 100 hectares, so it is no exaggeration to call it the largest man-made mountain in the world .
Wherever you stand in the town of Herringen, you can clearly see the salt mountain of Monte Kali, or even, when driving on the highway, one can be overwhelmed by its massiveness. Over time it has become a tourist attraction. Many people feel excited when admiring the mountain made from snow-white salt that stands out among the verdant plains.
In fact, at one point, people could pay to climb this massive salt mountain, as part of a guided tour. On average, it takes one person about 15 minutes to reach the top of 23 hectares wide. From the top of the mountain, visitors can see the entire Werra Valley as far as the Rhön and the Thuringian Forest.
This mountain is added more than 1000 tons of mosquitoes every hour.
Although it is difficult to estimate how much salt Monte Kali includes, most sources put its present mass at around 236 million tons .
This huge mountain has an area of 114 football fields and weighs as much as 23,600 Eiffel Towers combined. With more than 1,000 tons of edible salt added every hour of the day – about 7.2 million tons a year – the mountain is getting noticeably bigger.
A salt mountain of this size in central Germany, near the forests and river Werra, raises a number of environmental questions. Research has found that increasing salt piles, while also generating more brine, have caused the Werra River to become saline , and that groundwater in the area is not immune to the same fate.
Of the 60 to 100 species of invertebrates that once inhabited the area around Herringen, only three remain.
This could be described as an environmental disaster , but the potash industry is really big in the area, creating thousands of jobs for the people in the area, so shutting down production isn’t really worth it. seen as an option for the authorities.
Kali und Salz (K+S) , the company that operates the mines, has been granted a license extension to 2060 and even a request to expand Monte Kali by 25 hectares has been approved in 2020.
If you’re wondering how the K+S company is able to pour more than 1,000 tons of sodium chloride into Monte Kali every hour, they actually have a 1.5km conveyor belt that requires no human effort.