In the town of Herringen, located in central Germany, there is a massive pile of sodium chloride (table salt) so large that it is referred to as Monte Kali. This is the largest artificial salt mountain in the world.
The origins of Monte Kali can be traced back to 1976 when potassium salt began to be mined from the surrounding mines near the town of Hessen. Previously, potassium was used to produce products such as soap and glass, but today it is an essential ingredient in various fertilizers, synthetic rubber, and even some medications, leading to increased mining activities over the past few decades.
There is an issue, however: the extraction of potassium generates a significant amount of sodium chloride as a byproduct, necessitating a place for storage. Consequently, the company operating the potassium mines started considering dumping all this salt at a single site a few kilometers away from Herringen.
Over the years, they created a gigantic salt mountain that the locals named Monte Kali or Kalimanjaro (a play on the word Kalisalz, which means ‘potassium salt’ in German).
The massive salt mountain Monte Kali.
As of 2017, Monte Kali has reached a height of 530 meters above sea level and covers an area of over 100 hectares, making it fair to call it the largest artificial mountain in the world.
Regardless of where you stand in the town of Herringen, you can clearly see Monte Kali, and even when driving on the highway, one can be overwhelmed by its enormity. Over time, it has become a tourist attraction, with many visitors delighted to view the snow-white salt mountain standing out against the lush green plains.
In fact, at one point, people could pay to climb this enormous salt mountain as part of a guided tour. On average, it takes about 15 minutes for a person to reach the summit, which spans 23 hectares. From the top, visitors can observe the entire Werra Valley all the way to the Rhön and Thuringian Forest.
This mountain is added with more than 1,000 tons of table salt every hour.
While it is challenging to estimate how much salt Monte Kali contains, most sources indicate that its current mass is approximately 236 million tons.
This gigantic mountain has an area equivalent to 114 football fields and weighs as much as 23,600 Eiffel Towers combined. With over 1,000 tons of table salt being added every hour—about 7.2 million tons per year—this mountain is noticeably growing larger.
A salt mountain of this size in central Germany, near forests and the Werra River, raises several environmental questions. Studies have found that the increasing salt pile, which also generates a lot of brine, has caused the Werra River to become saline, and the groundwater in the area is not spared either.
Of the 60 to 100 species of invertebrates that once inhabited the area around Herringen, only 3 species remain today.
This can be described as an environmental disaster, but the potassium fertilizer industry is significant in the region, providing thousands of jobs for local residents, so shutting down production is not truly seen as an option for authorities.
Kali und Salz (K+S), the company operating the mines, has had its license extended to 2060 and even requested to expand Monte Kali by an additional 25 hectares, which was approved in 2020.
If you’re wondering how K+S can dump over 1,000 tons of sodium chloride into Monte Kali every hour, they actually have a conveyor belt that stretches 1.5 kilometers, eliminating the need for manual labor.
