If so, what would it matter?

If groundwater pollution really was a reason for the shutdown of the waterworks, the spatial outreach of the toxicity coming from Buna would be even larger than we initially expected. Suddenly, it would concern the entire population of the city of Halle, and not just the factory workers and direct neighbours. It would also imply that the Saale river itself might be more at risk for pollution than is commonly known.

Apart from the spatial dimension, attention would also be attracted to the temporal dimension of environmental contamination. The shutdown of the waterworks 17 years after the Fall of the Wall would support the argument that the locally prevalent narrative of pollution from Buna being a problem of the past (or, more precisely, a problem of the GDR) is not true at all. The LAF themselves mention that the timespans of soil and groundwater remediation turn out to be much larger than initially expected, with most remediation projects far from being concluded twenty years after its formation (LAF 2020: 5). Furthermore, in our case, where the chemical plant is still in operation, we cannot be sure if the contamination really originates from the GDR era only. Despite higher standards and improved control mechanisms it is likely that to some degree a chemical site this large does still leak contaminants to its environments.

With this in mind, the shutdown of the Beesen waterworks would be a powerful illustration of the toxic heritage of Buna reaching many years beyond the GDR era, and far beyond its direct surroundings.