Phosphates smother
Knapsack, W.G.
by Jachim Moskau
Newsweek Feature Service
KNAPSACK, West
GermanyAmong whatever
notes are being left for future
chroniclers of 20th century
pollution, a few words should
be included to explain the
disappearance of this little
town in the rollings hilis of the
Northern Rhine country. The
following is a beginning.
To the historians of the 2 1 st
century:
Until the summer of 1971,
the town of Knapsack had a
population of 2,500 people
and a thriving phosphate
industry. Unfortunately, the
two did not get along together.
Knapsack was an old town,
dating back to 1566, and was
believed to have gotten its
name from the shoulder bags in
which its people toted their
food when going to work in
the nearby peat moss and
soft-coal operations.
By 19 7 1, however.
Knapsack was most famous as
the home of Knapsack AG.
which was then the world's
second largest producer of
phosphate and turned out 15
per cent of all phospherous
products. Its two factories, on
the east and west sides of
town, consumed 2 per cent of
all the electric power generated
in West Germany and they did
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an annual business of about
$216 million.
But despite its importance,
the people of Knapsack during
the 1960s increasingly found
fault with Knapsack AG's
methods.
They objected to its soot,
smoke and fumes, which had
turned the town black, filled it
with an acrid, nauseous smell
and so darkened the sky that
they could barely make out the
sun.
They protested about its
"infernal racket" which, at 60
decibels, was equal to a car
racing its engine 20 yards away
and made sleeping difficult.
And they complained that
when particularly dense clouds
of gas descended, the fumes
wiped out potato patches,
defoliated the fruit trees, made
their clothing look like fish
nets and caused a burn on any
exposed skin.
In response to these
complaints, officials of
Knapsack AG instituted an
"environmental protection"
program to limit pollution.
They agreed, moreover, to
settle claims made for soot
damage to gardens, crops or
clothes, and began dispensing
several thousand dollars a year
in such settlements.
But despite these attempts
at harmony, friction between
the two factions continued to
mount. The firm's officials
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A Knapsack villager brandishes a potato plant that has been defoliated by
pollution from the Knapsack AG phosphate factory in background.
clained that no actual harm to
health had been proven and
that the fumes, soot and smell
were simply "bothersome."
But the townspeople kept on
complaining.
One morning in July 1971,
for example, the following
incident took place:
A wave of black soot
exploded from a smokestack
and fell upon the people and
houses along Industriestrasse in
great, sticky, flaky clouds.
The sooty downpour
blackened a baby in a carriage
from head to toe and took off
its hair up to the line of its cap.
Its mother expressed criticism
of the environmental
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protection program. Children
playing on the grass nearby
looked as though they were
ending a shift in the coal
mines.
A hausfrau on her way to a
funeral was also caught in the
soot fall and took it with bitter
humor. "Thank God I'm
wearing black today," she said.
As a result of such
incidents, tensions grew
steadily worse and there were
repeated demands for a
solution. But moving the plants
where so many Knapsack
people worked, company
officials maintained, would be
prohibitively expensive.
The upshot was that the
town fathers decided to
evacuate the people.
The officials of Knapsack
AG, however, refused to take
part in the evacuation. "When
we approached industry about
moving the population out of
Knapsack," reported selectman
Hermann Sieger, "they just
said, 'We don't want anything
to do with it. That's strictly up
to you.
Nonetheless, at a total cost
to the town and the state of
about $14 million, the
evacuation was begun. By late
summer of 1971, the people of
Knapsack were being resettled
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in Pescherhofe, a new town
about 3 miles away. The
morning after a family moved
out, a bulldozer came and
knocked its house down.
The people of Knapsack had
mixed feelings about the
solution. "When they tear
down your house," said retired
evacuee Alfred Frey, staring
out of his new, seventh floor
window across from an open
pit soft-coal mine, "it's as is
someone you know well has
died."
"But," another Knapsack
evacuee remarked, "at least we
can breathe."
Some 50 houses, or one
twelfth of those in Knapsack,
were razed during the summer
of 1 97 1 . Full evacuation, said a
town official, would be over
"within a few years," and then
there would be almost no
Knapsack left.
But Knapsack AG, of
course, would still be
flourishing and the phosphate
factories would not be able to
do without townspeople
altogether. A few company
houses would be left for
night-shift workers.
They were to be the
skeleton crews of a ghost town
and they were to be there for
emergencies.
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PAGE 8
THE DAILY NEB R ASK AN
MONDAY. OCTOBER 4, 1971
