What for decades was one of the areas most affected by coal mining is changing its face. In eastern Germany, between Berlin and Dresden, old lignite mines are giving way to a surprising landscape: a network of artificial lakes destined to become the largest in Europe.
The transformation concerns Lusatia, a region that during the Cold War was intensely exploited for coal extraction. The large craters left by open-pit mines have gradually been filled with water since the 1960s. The first symbolic step was the flooding of Lake Senftenberg in 1967.
Today that experiment has become a large-scale model: marinas, navigable canals, campsites and outdoor activities are completely redesigning the territory. Without human intervention, this area – characterized by sandy and permeable soils – would have remained almost devoid of lakes. The so-called “Lusatia Lake District“includes 23 artificial basins for a total of approximately 14 thousand hectares. The objective is to connect at least ten of them through a network of navigable canals, creating a continuous space of over 7 thousand hectares of water. Some connections are already operational, others are under construction.
The numbers tell the scale of the intervention: up to 600 million euros for a single lake, around 7 billion already invested in Lusatia alone and almost 14 billion also considering other German mining basins. But why is it so important?
From “brown gold” to radiant waters
To understand the value of the Lusatia Lake District, it is essential to recognize the historical backbone of the region: lignite mining. Beneath the rolling plains of Lusatia lay some of the richest deposits of brown coal in Europe, locally called “brown gold”. For well over a century, starting in the 19th century and expanding dramatically in the 20th century, this resource has supported local economies, fueled industries, produced electricity, and shaped entire communities.
However, this economic benefit has come at an environmental cost. Entire villages were relocated or dismantled, water tables were artificially lowered, forests and soils were disturbed, and vast open-pit mines scarred the land. The image of Lusatia in the mid-20th century was one of industrial intensity and stark transformation, a testament to human determination and a warning about ecological impact.
The reunification of Germany in 1990 marked a crucial turning point for the region. As federal environmental policy changed and global awareness of climate change and coal’s carbon footprint intensified, the German government and regional authorities began to phase out extensive brown coal mining in Lusatia. As coal resources became depleted and the environmental cost no longer justifiable, mining operations declined, leaving behind an industrial landscape of mines, rubble, and broken land.
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To date, all this is work that, according to experts, will still take decades to complete. A key milestone will come in summer 2026: five lakes, Senftenberg, Geierswald, Partwitz, Sedlitz and Großräschen, will be connected to each other, forming a single navigable system. It will be possible to travel tens of kilometers by boat, while transport, landing places and accommodation facilities will be developed in the coming years. In addition to their tourist attraction, these lakes will perform an increasingly important function: storing water and mitigating the effects of drought. Filling occurs by diverting water from local rivers, speeding up a process that would naturally take up to a century.
Lusatia’s project is more than a local project: it is a concrete example of transition from a fossil economy to a regenerated territory, which could inspire other European regions still linked to coal. The still active mines will be progressively closed by 2038 and even those voids in the ground, once a symbol of exploitation, will become part of a new landscape. Where there were craters and dust, today water, biodiversity and new economies are born, showing how profoundly we can transform the territory.
