While Switzerland’s Alp lakes are world-famous because of how postcard-worthy and pristine they look, some of them are hiding a secret beneath their surface. The Swiss military has been using multiple lakes as a dumping ground for (unspent) munition for decades but the government is now getting increasingly worried about the damage that could cause to the ecosystem and is looking for a way to get them out.
Switzerland has been officially neutral since 1815, having adopted an “armed neutrality” defence strategy. All Swiss men are required to do military service in order to maintain a large army if needed and many of the military training sessions are organised within the country’s borders, above lakes, on mountain tops and in between.
This doesn’t just mean that (unspent) munition is being found scattered across the country, it also means that the Swiss military has a lot of weapons and munition laying around in case it is ever needed. When those became too old to be used, the army used to dump them into mountain lakes in order to ‘safely dispose’ of them.
At the time, this was seen as the best option and now thousands of tonnes are lying on the bottom of lakes Lucerne, Thun, Brienz and Neuchatel. The last one was even used for bombing practice until 2021 and an estimated 4,500 tonnes of munition are hiding beneath its surface, some of them spent, some unspent and possibly ready to explode. The depth at which the weapons are hiding also greatly varies, from 220 metres to a mere 7 metres below the water surface.
An assessment of possible recovery techniques in 2005 revealed all of those studied to be dangerous both for the ecosystem and the people in charge of the recovery. And until now, many scientists believed that leaving the ammunition in place would be the safest way to proceed. In a comment to the New York Times, Mike Sainsbury, the managing director of Zetica, a British company that specialises in handling unexploded ordnance, said he would probably still advise to do so “if the munitions were not immediately hazardous, or if they were not likely to degrade in a harmful way”.
However, the Swiss defence department is now offering 50,000 Swiss francs (almost 5,000 euros) in prize money to the people who come up with the best three ideas to recover the munition safely.
La Suisse a lancé une compétition pour trouver comment ramasser les 8 000 tonnes de munitions enfouies dans les lacs du pays#Suisse #Guerre #Ecologie #Munitions pic.twitter.com/2GbfPEAwmz
— Allons-y (@AllonsY_Social) August 23, 2024
“The submerged ammunition is covered by a fine sediment layer up to two metres thick. If the sediments are stirred up during recovery, this might lead to the loss of oxygen, which is only available in low quantities at this depth, and, as a result, damage the lake ecosystem”, the Swiss Army explains in a statement. “In addition to the poor visibility and the risks of explosion, the water depth, the current, the dimensions (4 mm to 20 cm size, 0.4 g to 50 kg weight) and the condition of the submerged ammunition present a further challenge. Most of the ammunition components consist of iron and are magnetic, however certain detonators are made of non-magnetic copper, brass or aluminium. All these factors represent major challenges for environmentally friendly ammunition recovery.”
The competition for the best ideas is open until 6 February 2025.
