landslide blog This book is written by Dave Petley, widely recognized as a world leader in landslide research and management.
In Denmark, there are rumors of a major scandal over a massive landslide at a site owned by Nordic Waste, a company specializing in the treatment of contaminated soil. The ruins in question are located in the area of Landers town near Orst. [56.3812, 10.0822°].
The site is an old clay pit that receives contaminated soil for processing and the waste is dumped into an old factory, presumably to restore the landscape. In 2021, the discarded soil became unstable and began to move. GEUS, the national geological survey of Denmark and Greenland, says in its online report using remote sensing that the landslides will be fully developed by the summer of 2023 and that their movement will continue during the dry summer months. But it shows that it lasted.
Here is a Google Earth image from April 2022 showing the deformation:-
Specifically, it can be seen that the road in the center of the site has been moved extensively towards the east.
The GEUS report includes the following diagram outlining the extent of the landslide and the dates the landslide features are visible.
Note that the pink dashed line indicates the lateral extent of the December 2023 landslide. As the image above shows, the landslide has now spread across the site and there is a risk of contaminated soil flowing into waterways. The volume of the landslide is estimated at 2 million tons.
Nordic Waste is owned by the family of Torben Østergaard Nielsen, Denmark’s sixth richest man. Last week, the Danish Environment Ministry issued an injunction against Nordic Waste, and yesterday (22 January 2024) the company was declared bankrupt. The company declared that this ends Nordic Waste’s liability. This could leave Danish taxpayers to shoulder the cost of cleaning up the site, which is estimated to be around €27 million (US$29.5 million), but could actually be much higher. there is.
The incident has raised many questions, particularly why the hazards at the site were not properly monitored by local authorities, why Nordic Waste did not play a role in stabilizing the site, and why the company declared bankruptcy. How is it acceptable to evade responsibility by
Meanwhile, the landslide is progressing relentlessly and is expected to eventually not only threaten Olust but also cause a large-scale pollution incident.
This appears to be a classic case of privatizing profits while socializing losses, and should not be tolerated.