THE RECULTIVATION of the Kalové Pole sludge bed in Žiar nad Hronom, a project aimed at removing an old environmental burden that lasted six years and cost altogether €3 million, has been completed, the TASR newswire reported on December 5. The project was finished half a year ahead of schedule.
“Kalové Pole, which the Slovak public viewed for many years as a threat, is a harmless hill today,” Ján Klimko, the general director of the ZSNP company which oversaw the project, told a press conference, as quoted by TASR. “This recultivation is a unique project in Europe, since nowhere else in Europe has any such project been completed so far. In cooperation with the project designer and notable Slovak experts we had to find a whole range of original and innovative solutions that couldn’t have been predicted when the project was designed.”
If the sludge bed had not been saved, there would exist the threat of alkaline water leaking through the dams and into the environment, which would result in contamination of groundwater and soil, not only in the area surrounding the sludge bed but also the Hron River, Klimko explained.
