Ingeborg Steensma grew up with mining. It shaped her everyday life and that of her family. Her father was once a demolition expert in the Sophia-Jacoba coal mine in Hückelhoven. He had lived his entire life in the small village between Aachen and Mönchengladbach in western Germany.

“When my father died, it was clear to me that I had to help,” says Steensma. She moved into her parents’ house to take care of her mother and her mentally disabled sister. It wasn’t until weeks after moving there that she realized what she had gotten herself into. There are centimeter-wide cracks in the basement, foundation and walls of the house. Moisture penetrates through walls and floors. Some of the windows and doors are warped and can’t be opened. The front section of the building is so crooked that her mother’s wheeled walker starts moving on its own if the brakes aren’t pulled. Life in the house is a “daily nightmare,” says Steensma, 64.

She has little doubt as to who caused the damage. For years, Eschweiler Bergwerksverein (EBV), a former subsidiary of Ruhrkohle AG (RAG), mined bituminous coal in giant seams directly underneath the house, says Peter Immekus, an independent expert on mining damage.

In addition, says Immekus, the property is within the range of a crevice several hundred meters in length, which causes ongoing subsidence in the ground beneath the foundations.

The proof of mining damage could hardly be more obvious, says Immekus. Other houses in the neighborhood have been lost in landslides or are full of cracks. Until the 1980s, the mine operator had performed repairs without much fuss. But for many years now the company’s behavior has changed.

Seeing No Evil

RAG now claims that fractures and imbalances are attributable to building construction flaws and that the claims of local residents are also past the statute of limitations. The company also closes its eyes to the crevice on its property. In fact, it simply doesn’t appear on the mine operator’s official mining maps.

For Steensma, all of this is an “appalling injustice.” She refuses to accept the notion that her father’s former employer is going to look on unapologetically when she and her care-dependent mother and 61-year-old sister end up on the street one day. But she doesn’t have the money for a lawsuit involving costly expert witnesses and attorneys.

There is a method to the mining company’s coarse approach, say victims. The coal mining industry and Germany’s largest industry giant, RAG, are gradually pulling out of the country’s industrial Ruhr region, now that lawmakers are no longer willing to pay billions in subsidies for unprofitable German coal. The last mine is expected to be closed by 2018. When that happens, the last shift will come to an end in a region that has seen more than 200 years of coal mining.

But instead of departing from the Ruhr region with decency, the company is apparently doing what it can to minimize costs and expenses. “It is a withdrawal that involves increasingly questionable methods, and it comes at the cost of thousands of home and property owners,” says Klaus Friedrichs, the founder of one of the first victims’ rights organizations in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The sums in question are in the triple-digit millions, and more than 35,000 damage claims are filed each year. They range from trifles like warped gazebos to road subsidence to the total collapse of houses and factories.

Game of Attrition

The company has set aside about €3.3 billion ($4.4 billion) on its balance sheet to pay for the claims. But instead of comprehensively addressing the damage caused by its activities, RAG is apparently playing a wearing game of attrition with the claimants.

Those affected by the damage report that the company systematically contests and ignores damage claims. They say that the intimidated victims are paid off with insignificant amounts and, in return, are often even required to agree not to file any further claims.

The few who reject the company’s offers can apparently look forward to years of legal battles with RAG lawyers, while their homes gradually fall apart. “A perfidious system has developed in which every trick in the book is used,” says Andreas Mollinga, a civil engineer from the city of Marl who specializes in mining damage.

According to victims’ attorneys, RAG hasn’t even shied away from illegal practices to fend off millions in claims. For example, for years the company allegedly enhanced official documents and maps and flouted regulations on how they are to be filed, so as to prevent claims from arising in the first place.

The lawyers have forwarded the documents to the state parliament in Düsseldorf, which has already addressed the accusations in several committee meetings.

No conclusions have been reached yet, but if the accusations prove to be correct, RAG could face millions more in damage claims. Indeed, the authorities could very well be looking into whether to file criminal charges against company executives.

Mining Maps

RAG “firmly rejects the accusations.” According to RAG Director Peter Fischer, “all damage related to mining” is addressed quickly and without red tape to help the victims. More than 90 percent of awards are for less than €5,000, says Fischer, while appeals and lawsuits are marginal. The cases cited by the attorneys are old, he adds, and they often involve no damage or significantly less damage than estimated. Fischer denies that there was any “systematic manipulation.”

The victims’ attorneys disagree. They are specifically concerned with mining maps, which are official documents that are prepared by mine surveyors at RAG and can be used as evidence in court cases. RAG is required to meticulously identify all mining sites on the maps, as well as to regularly note all mining-related and natural abnormalities on the earth’s surface.

This includes crevices, shifts or areas of subsidence that occurred in the past as a result of natural conditions, such as earthquakes or tectonic plate movement.

The reason for this measure is simple: If there are mining-related or natural areas of subsidence, crevices or natural terraces, mining coal underneath these areas is associated with significantly higher risks than is already the case.

This means that mining in deeper layers “acts like a catalyst,” explains expert Immekus. The earth sinks and, in some cases, entire tectonic plates are set into motion. Mining agency documents refer to these conditions as “discontinuities,” and thus as serious indications for the occurrence of “especially severe mining damage.”

The process is undisputed. And lawmakers have also created clear rules to address these problems. If visible damage occurs to houses or land in these mining areas, mining itself, in the form of a reversal of the burden of proof, is initially to be viewed as the cause. In other words, it is not up to homeowners to prove that a mine operator is responsible for damage. Rather, RAG must prove that it was not responsible. If it cannot do so, it is required to compensate the injured parties.

Changing Approach

The Sommer family in the Baerl district of Duisburg also assumed that this was the case. After saving for many years, some 24 years ago the couple finally achieved their dream of owning a home: a 240-square-meter (2,580-square-foot) house, lovingly furnished and cared for, on a property with a small swimming pond.

Everything seemed perfect to the Sommers, until the first small cracks appeared 12 years ago. The couple quickly recognized the cause. The house is in an area where coal was mined until a few years ago. Mining damage resulting from tremors and subsiding soil are common.

At first, RAG offered no objections when the Sommers contacted its claims department. “Without any complaint, walls were plastered, and tiles and warped door frames were replaced,” says Eveline Sommer.

But in 2007 RAG began to change its previously accommodating approach. The company now informed the couple that the damage to the house was not attributable to mining, and that the company would not pay the Sommers’ claim for compensation.

“Our nightmare began that day,” says Sommer. The earth continued to shift underneath their house. Heavy floor panels and footings in the basement have cracked since then, and tiles, floors and doorframes are breaking throughout the house. Even the roof has collapsed in some spots.

An Astonishing Discovery

The Sommers hired lawyers and appraisers, who made an astonishing discovery when they reviewed the mining maps: a fracture passes through the entire region. But according to the RAG maps, the discontinuity – miraculously enough – stops precisely at the Sommers’ property line and begins again immediately on the other side of it.

This is hardly possible, geologically speaking. The discontinuity in the family’s garden is visible with the naked eye, even to a layman. But not to RAG. Its mine surveyors cite “inexplicable phenomena” and doggedly refuse to revise the maps.

This has serious adverse consequences for the Sommers. “Without the revision,” explains Michael Terwiesche, a victims’ attorney in Düsseldorf, “the family stands a significantly poorer chance of prevailing against the company.” Using expensive geological reports and surveys, the Sommers must now attempt to prove that mining is to blame for the damage. They have already had to take out a €125,000 loan.

Even legal protection insurance wouldn’t have helped them. All insurance companies operating in Germany refuse to accept cases against mining companies. An arbitration board that has since been established can only become involved in cases with the active consent of the mining company. According to RAG, however, arbitration is only used in rare cases.

In contrast, RAG lawyers are apparently deliberately forcing cases to drag on for years. “Many victims can’t last that long and eventually give up, exhausted and ruined financially,” says Michael Schumacher, an attorney who specializes in mining law. The Sommers have almost reached that point. After fighting RAG for seven years, they left their house a few weeks ago. “I simply couldn’t stand it anymore, to have to watch every day as mining gradually destroys our property,” says Sommer.

RAG spokesman Christof Beike refuses to accept this explanation. He claims that there is no systematic rejection of or effort to slow down cases. Besides, says RAG Director Fischer, underground disturbances play no “more significant role” in the handling of damage claims. “If there is a damage claim for which we are responsible, it gets paid.” The maps, he adds, are not even needed to address these claims. In other words, says Fischer, the company derives no benefit from not entering surface changes onto the maps.

But Fischer’s claim has little to do with reality. During legal disputes, say appraisers and victims’ attorneys alike, RAG experts routinely cite the absence of lines on the mining maps when their goal is fend off claims. In court, says Immekus, it is also standard practice to cite mining maps as evidence. The victims’ prospects, as well as the potential damage awards, increase substantially when the surface changes are identified on the maps.

There is also another reason why RAG has such a problem with the lines, attorney Terwiesche recently explained at an academic colloquium in the western German city of Aachen. If the company were to have all discontinuity lines added to its maps, this could prompt regulators to impose mining restrictions in especially vulnerable locations. Concretely, this means that RAG would be permitted to mine less coal or mine at a slower pace in the applicable areas, which in turn would translate into bitter losses.

Instead, the incomplete mining maps are perhaps much more widespread than RAG is willing to admit. The company vaguely mentions “10 disputed” cases. Former mine surveyors, however, estimate that several hundred defects were not entered into maps in the southern Ruhr region alone. Independent experts like Mollinga and Immekus also say that a large percentage of the maps they have reviewed at local mining authorities are “incomplete.” This substantially limits the evidence available to injured parties.

Sinking Fields

One of those injured parties is Hermann Schulze-Bergcamen, who farms 180 hectares (445 acres) of land in the eastern Ruhr region together with his son Stefan. Bit by bit, mining is depriving the family of its livelihood. Coal has been mined beneath their fields for more than a century, with 14 different seams running in various directions. As a result, the buildings on the farm have subsided more and more, to a point at which they are now eight meters below street level. The large buildings for vegetables and potatoes are ongoing construction sites, and water recently seeped into the grain storage building, destroying part of the harvest.

Conditions are even worse in the fields, which have sunk by up to 30 meters. Cracks and faults permeate the entire area, making sowing impossible on some parts of the land, while crops no longer grow properly on others. Together with his attorneys, Schulze-Bergcamen has calculated that his losses have already amounted to almost €1 million. But despite the fact that he has submitted expert reports to support his claims, RAG has only recognized portions of it.

That could now change. The victims’ attorneys, at least, are convinced that the company has been breaking the law for years, and even the regulatory agency in Arnsberg, at the eastern end of the Ruhr region, which tends to favor RAG, has indicated the possible need for action.

Under the supervision of that agency, RAG has essentially cobbled together its own mining laws, the attorneys argue in their statements to the state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia. They state, for example, that the company ignored the law for years by not entering all surface cracks and faults into its mining maps, but only those that are visible and “mining-related.”

But what exactly “mining-related” means is practically up to RAG, or rather its team of mine surveyors, to define. The regulatory agency considered the technical standard created by the industry’s own associations as legitimate, says victims’ attorney Carsten Heise. But the standard, he notes, merely defines how a mining map is to be maintained, not what it should include. As a result of this approach, says Heise, only a portion of the actual geological changes has found its way into the official documents.

Systematic Fraud

“What was happening there for years is systematic fraud,” says Terwiesche. Victims’ attorneys are considering taking the case to court. Some of the victims also plan to file criminal complaints against company executives with the applicable public prosecutor’s office.

RAG officials find the accusation difficult to comprehend and insist that their procedures are correct. They note that mine surveyors, by the very nature of their profession, are independent and obligated to perform objective work, serving as quasi notary publics for the mining industry. There is no inadmissible exertion of influence, says director Fischer, and manipulation, especially of a deliberate nature, can be ruled out.

This explanation sounds like a mockery to the victims and independent appraisers like Immekus. What RAG isn’t saying is that, in contrast to states like Bavaria, where independent mine surveying offices produce the mining documents, the relevant experts in North Rhine-Westphalia work directly for and are paid by RAG. “In other words, their supposed freedom from influence only appears on paper,” says Immekus, pointing to the many disputes he has experienced.

“The affected parties are dealing with a cartel, against which they cannot defend themselves,” says Josef Hovenjürgen, a politician with the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a member of the state parliamentary committee responsible for mining safety. Another member of the committee, the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) politician Dietmar Brockes, also couldn’t believe at first “how the mining industry actually treats the victims.” The practice of managing the mining maps, with which the committee is familiar, is “at least partially illegal and not in conformity with the law,” says Brockes. As a result, victims have “poor prospects of receiving compensation.”

Because of concerns like these, the CDU and the FDP want the regulatory agency in Arnsberg to tell the company to update its maps so that they are in conformity with the law, to add “missing faults” and, most of all, to establish “independent mine surveyors outside the company.” The lawmakers plan to debate the potentially explosive motion in the coming weeks. Oliver Krischer, the Green Party’s energy policy spokesman in the federal government, is also calling for new legislation to regulate the neutrality of mine surveyors.

Only the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the state’s economics minister, SPD politician Garrelt Duin, are hesitant over whether to support the attack on RAG. “We see no need for action at this time,” say ministry officials. For the Social Democrats, it would be tantamount to a breach of taboo, because the party has been so closely aligned with coal and the mining industry in the Rhine and Ruhr regions for decades. The image of benevolent mining, with its intrepid miners retrieving “pit gold from the depths of the earth” to safeguard German prosperity, is deeply engrained with the party.

Crumbling Myth

But the myth is beginning to crumble, partly because the obvious environmental damage mining is leaving behind as it phases out its operations. Large swathes of the Ruhr region have subsided dramatically because of coal mining, with subsidence of up to 30 meters in some areas.

A number of regions are now subject to flooding during heavy rains and when rivers are running high. For decades to come, giant pumps will continue to pump millions of cubic meters of water, to prevent the flooding of thousands of caverns that perforate the Ruhr region from Aachen in the west and Unna in the east.

But even more egregious than the environmental damage is the questionable approach with which RAG, under CEO Bernd Tönjes, is now trying to avoid its responsibility to those people who endured and supported mining for decades.

Only a few weeks ago, the company had to admit that it had completely misstated the area affected by mining at the famous Prosper-Haniel mine in Bottrop. According to calculations by the Technical University of Clausthal in the northern state of Lower Saxony, damage attributable to mining could occur within a perimeter of up to 65 square kilometers (25 square miles). RAG had only identified a 36-square-kilometer area and, in the past, had brushed off all damage reports beyond this so-called zero line. Victims’ rights representative Friedrichs believes that the change could affect about 50,000 homeowners.

Unacceptable Behavior

Meanwhile, the mood is even beginning to shift among parts of the business community. In a letter from small and mid-sized businesses to North Rhine-Westphalia Economics Minister Duin, company owners openly complain about the mining company’s “behavior, which is no longer acceptable.” Livelihoods, businesses and jobs are in jeopardy, the letter continues, because the company is not adequately living up to its responsibility in the settlement of losses.

Well-known individuals like Emil Underberg signed the letter. Underberg, the maker of the eponymous herbal bitters, has been at odds with RAG for years, because his company headquarters in Rheinberg has subsided by more than a meter and is heavily damaged. Owners of smaller businesses, like Gerhard Bongardt, also signed the letter.

Bongardt processes food for big industry at a site on the outskirts of Kamp-Lintfort. In a few weeks, however, he may have to shut down the operation, with its 25 jobs. The floors, walls and roofs of his buildings are heavily damaged. If there is any further earth movement, some of the buildings will no longer be usable for production.

In Bongardt’s case, the damage is also caused by long cracks and crevices in the earth that permeate the property. But, once again, RAG refused to enter various surface changes into its maps and assume further costs. This prompted Bongardt and his attorneys to launch the initiative in the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament; they also support other victims.

Perhaps the initiative is one reason RAG is being particularly unbending in his case. Company lawyers say that the entrepreneur was paid about €2.5 million a few years ago, and that he signed a settlement agreement under which all damage claims were fully and definitively settled.