Willa Rubin
speaker
53 appearances
4 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Mar 2025
Willa Rubin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Mm-hmm. This groundwater can be, like, less than three on the pH scale, like lemon juice. We should be swimming in water that is close to, like, seven or eight on a pH scale. Oh, gosh. Okay, so—
So there's a couple methods. One is a sort of like break glass in case of emergency method. And that is to add limestone powder. So thinking about pH, limestone, lime is a base. So then that helps to balance out the acidity. But this treatment also tends to be pretty expensive. And it also isn't like the most natural method to treat acidity.
Add water from rivers. You know, get some fresh water in the mix.
Yes. So, okay, so part one of this playbook, which is, you know, neutralizing the groundwater's acidity, so far in Cottbus, they have managed to do this without limestone powder and Since 2019, lake designers have been flooding the pit with water from the Spree River, which goes up to Berlin. And now the pH is about 8. We love it.
And Stefan, the urban planner for the lake, says that the flooding is even on track to finish next year. Very cool. Okay, so the lake is almost to the level they would like. But Emily, they are not the only ones who also want spray water. Because there are other pit lakes, smaller ones, but they also get water from the spray. Even nature preserves, like the Spray Forest outside of Berlin.
Environmental groups have expressed concerns about this. Because the Spray River is drying up anyway. And then with Germany going renewable and phasing out mines over the course of the next decade... All that means that the Spree River isn't getting as much water as it used to, like from mines that were once pumping a lot of water into the Spree.
So now everyone is sort of taking turns, making agreements, essentially competing for an increasingly limited resource. On the other hand, without water from the spray, there would be that Swiss cheese landscape. So that's kind of the balancing act when trying to restore nature, but with limited natural resources. That is sort of a cash 22 to all of this, huh? Yeah, exactly.
And for the Cottbusser OSE, this has contributed to why the flooding has taken a while, which has also contributed to another problem. the shoreline. Because ideally, you'd have to fill a pit with water very quickly. Why is that? Like, picture this. You have groundwater seeping into the lake from the bottom and sides of the pit, and then pipes and channels, they bring river water into the pit.
And together, these put pressure on the pit, which then stabilizes the shoreline around it.
And shorelines can also be unstable because of the materials on the sidewalls or of how the waves work once there is water in the pit lake. There is a lot to monitor. And the shoreline has been this ongoing challenge. And the stakes of figuring that out are high.
The city of Cottbus, also the German state that it's in, Brandenburg, even private businesses, they have invested a lot of money into making this lake accessible to the public. There are plans for houses and businesses by the shoreline. Millions of euros have already been spent on a bike path around the lake. So they are determined to figure this out with more time.
And that's what I was struck by as we drove around the lake. Even though the lake is still in progress, there were already people there just sitting by their cars, beers in hand, enjoying the view. They're already part of the way there.
Translation help from Alex Passeltiener, my boyfriend, who speaks German.
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