Before Opening: What You Need to Know About the Lusatian Lakes

The significance of the five lakes

With this opening, “the largest man-made water landscape in Europe” has been created, according to tourism director Winkler. At the same time, the LMBV notes, this marks a major step toward structural change in Lusatia. It has been exactly 100 years since the first excavators broke ground for the “Ilse-Ost” open-pit mine, on the site of which Sedlitzer Lake now lies. Generations of miners have worked on the reclamation of the former open-pit mines. In the 1980s, nearly 190 million metric tons of lignite were mined annually in Lusatia, according to the Lusatian and Central German Mining Administration Company (LMBV).

According to the LMBV, a lake district comprising 23 post-mining lakes with a total water area of 14,000 hectares is being created in the Lusatian mining region. By comparison: Lake Müritz—Germany’s largest inland lake—covers an area of approximately 11,300 hectares, according to the Water and Shipping Authority.

How much earth was moved and what the flooding cost

The last active open-pit mine in the area of the five lakes was the “Meuro” open-pit mine. Coal was mined until 1999 in the area where Großräschener Lake is located today. The remaining open-pit mines were shut down during the GDR era. Lake Senftenberg, for example—the tourist heart of the lake system—was flooded as early as 1967 and opened in the 1970s. 

The scale of the project becomes clear when expressed in numbers: In the area of the four “youngest” lakes in the network—for which the LMBV is responsible for rehabilitation and flooding—approximately 925 million metric tons of coal were mined. Just under 3.8 billion cubic meters of earth were moved to access the lignite, explains LMBV spokesperson Uwe Steinhuber. Today, all five lakes together hold a theoretical water volume of 640 million cubic meters. 

According to LMBV data, approximately 61 million cubic meters of water flowed into all the lakes in the Lusatian mining region last year alone—15 million cubic meters of that into the “Restlochkette” alone—that is, the network of the five large lakes. According to the data, most of the water came from the Spree River. Conversely, the lakes are also used as water reservoirs to replenish the rivers, for example, when water levels are low. 

Since the early 1990s, the LMBV has, according to its own figures, spent 941 million euros on the restoration of the four lakes in the system for which it is responsible.

What the lakes bring to tourism

Tourism Association Director Winkler hopes for an “attractive vacation region with international appeal.” Last year, according to the association, the region already welcomed 269,000 guests and recorded 800,000 overnight stays. The most important foreign market for the region is the Czech Republic. Guests from Saxony’s neighboring country accounted for around 23,000 overnight stays. Polish guests accounted for 4,399 overnight stays in the region. According to the association, there are already over 300 boat moorings on the Saxon side and over 700 on the Brandenburg side. In the future, this number is expected to exceed 1,400.

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