Located in Germany's most populated area, the 282 square kilometre (sqkm) North Rhine Westfalia (NRW) coal mining zone stands as a bright example of how agriculture, water bodies, forests, communities and coal mines can co-exist for each other's benefit.

Mining coal from open pits is a story of more than a hundred years for Germany. The NRW area is an ideal case study for Bangladesh because it is densely populated with 529 people living in each sqkm area. Till now 196 sqkm area of NRW has already been mined and completely reclaimed.

From the fifties, about 50,000 people have been resettled to facilitate mining. Sometimes resettlements created disputes and political debates but Germany chose to expand mining to cater to its greater economic needs.

The Daily Star correspondent visited the mines and coal power plant installations near Cologne at the invitation of Asia Energy Bangladesh between July 25 and July 28. The Daily Star covered the travel and hotel cost of its correspondent while Asia Energy that has stakes in the Phulbari Coal Mine facilitated the visit in collaboration with Germany's biggest mining and power company RWE. RWE is a consultant company for Asia Energy for handling Phulbari project's most sensitive area -- water table.

Twenty to 30 km off the busy city of Cologne, one would come across the vast open pit mines. There are three open pit mines in operation-- Hambach mine pit which is as big as 20 sqkm with mine area spreading 42 sqkm and a gradual depth reaching 390 metres, Inden mine is 38 sqkm having a depth of 350 metres and Garzweiler-2 mine is 48 sqkm.

Records show that the 282 sqkm NRW area now has 12.5 percent of it for buildings and open spaces, 1.05 percent for plant area, 0.6 percent for mines, 6.8 percent for traffic movement, 1.6 percent recovery phase area, 49.6 percent for agriculture, 1.9 percent for water and 25.2 percent for forest.

These three mines are annually producing 10 million tonnes of lignite coal against a total proven reserve of 3.8 billion tonnes in the NRW area. More than 90 percent of this coal can be extracted in the open pit method of mining, which is in a sharp contrast wit the fact that coal extraction can be as low as 6 per cent of it in an underground mine like Barapukuria in Bangladesh in its 30-year lifetime.

The RWE, which is a homegrown German company, operates this mine and uses this entire lignite to generate 11,000 megawatt power in the NRW area alone. RWE produces 33,000 MW power from lignite all across Germany. RWE Power Co that employs more than 18,000 people earned 6.57 billion euros in the last fiscal year.

Because of the open pit system of mining, which allows maximum extraction of coal reserves, the cost of RWE's lignite-fired power is less than euro 1 cent, says RWE BOA Power Plant's executive Egbert Reinartz.

But besides economic factors, there are human and environmental factors in judging whether open pit mines are better than underground mines.

"There had not been one instance of fatality in the last 30 years in these mines," says RWE's senior hydro-geologist Dr Thomas Von Schwarzenberg. "There had been accidents but not deaths."

In contrast, official figure of death in underground mines of China last year was 5,000 and unofficially death figure is said to be 20,000 a year. Even on August 1, 67 miners died in China. The Barapukuria mine so far witnessed three or four deaths though it is not operating in full scale.

When the RWE is granted licence to mine in a certain area, it has to acquire the land that belongs to private citizens or the government. Accordingly, RWE acquires agricultural areas and villages for certain period of time. The communities are given new areas and homes to live in, preferably within 10 to 20 km of their original homes. The government and communities are closely involved in this phase.

After it completes mining in that area, it must scientifically fill up most part of the void so that the land becomes arable again. Restoration of agricultural land and forest undergos a process lasting several years to ensure that the fertility level has reached its original state.

Part of a mined area will always have a void because the miners take away huge quantities of coal. This void is scientifically turned into lakes which the public can access as recreation and sports facilities. Such residual lake can be 25 sqkm big and 150 metres deep.

As an open pit mine is easy to work in, the miners have installed 300 km of conveyor belts in the three mines of NRW, plus there is 600 km of railroad to carry coal to power stations in the area.

RWE's Mining Engineer Ruediger Durchholz pointed out some of the major issues of mining that need constant attention -- noise, dust, groundwater, reclamation of land and resettlement of communities.

The mining company strictly maintains dust and noise prevention measures. A monitoring group, other than the government, keeps an eye on the mining activities.

He said on an average 10 percent people of a community, especially the older generation, oppose resettlement. These resistance can lead to court cases but typically the law upholds the necessity of mining over individual properties.

"When there is a resettlement issue, a villager becomes concerned at the loss of properties, unclear future and familiarisation at new locations. We ask the affected people to be involved in the designing of their new homes in new locations. They are given higher payments for their old homes," Durchholz noted.

The Daily Star correspondent visited villages that have been evacuated for mine development and newly built villages occupied by the affected people in the NRW area. The adjacent reclaimed vast agricultural land mainly grows beet and vegetables. The reclaimed dense forest areas are now homes to deer, jackals and rabbits, making it hard to believe that these areas were coal mines only a couple of decades back.

The RWE must plan everything many years ahead of its actions. For instance, in the near future, two complete open pit mines undergoing reclamation phase will leave two lakes. "These will require 35 billion tonnes of waters to fill up. We have proposed to fill it up with water from the Rhine river. To do that, we have paid the government in advance," said hydro-geologist Dr Thomas Von Schwarzenberg.

Developing one of the mines-- Inden mine--required diversion of the local Inde river from south side to the northern side by four kilometres. The plan was made in 1990 and implemented in 2005 by making 12 km of new riverbed.

The history of RWE itself explains why this company acts so responsibly. RWE was created through merger of 15 local mining companies. RWE is a combination of all stakeholders of the German society with 10 percent government shares, 44 percent institutional shares, 14 percent private, 2 percent employees' and 21 percent municipalities' shares.

Though Germany started mining lignite from late 1890s, it actually started large scale mining from 1933 using monstrous bucket-wheel excavators in 23 mines.

By 1944, Germany was producing 60 million tonnes of lignite from these mines. With the improvement of bucket-wheel and other mining technology, Germany now produces 100 million tonnes from three mines alone. A bucket-wheel excavator that can excavate 224,000 cubic metres of coal or soil a day consumes 16 MW power itself.