Hambach surface mine

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You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (June 2017) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 2,052 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Tagebau Hambach]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Tagebau Hambach}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Hambach surface mine

Aerial view of Hambach surface mine
Location
Location	Niederzier and Elsdorf, North Rhine-Westphalia
Country	Germany
Coordinates	50°54′39″N 6°30′10″E / 50.91083°N 6.50278°E / 50.91083; 6.50278
Production
Products	Lignite
Type	Open-pit
History
Opened	1978 (1978)
Owner
Company	RWE

The Tagebau Hambach is a large open-pit coal mine (German: Tagebau) in Niederzier and Elsdorf, North Rhine–Westphalia, Germany. It is operated by RWE and used for mining lignite.

The mine is on the site of the ancient Hambach Forest, which was purchased by RWE in 1978. The company then cut most of the forest down and cleared it to mine. Only 10% of the forest area remains. RWE planned to clear half of the remaining area between 2018 and 2020. This plan was met with massive protests in the autumn of 2018 and was temporarily stopped in October 2018 by the supreme administrative court of North Rhine–Westphalia (Oberverwaltungsgericht für das Land Nordrhein-Westfalen).^[1][2][3]

Begun in 1978, the mine's operation area currently (as of end of 2017) has a size of 43.8 km², with the total area designated for mining having a size of 85 km².^[4] It is the deepest open pit mine with respect to sea level: the bottom of the pit, with up to 500 metres (1,640 ft) from the surface, is 299 metres (981 ft) below sea level,^[5] the deepest artificially made point in North Rhine–Westphalia.^[5]