For the past week, one of the main topics of discussion in Oberursel has centered around a small piece of land in the Eppsteiner Straße, hidden away behind houses 11 and 13.

The land, which has been owned by the town itself since the 1970s, was once home to a company that cleaned out barrels there.  Whatever they did, it apparently resulted in the ground being contaminated with a cocktail of chemicals, collectively known as “lightly volatile halogenated hydrocarbons”, abbreviated in German as LHKWs.

This all lay undiscovered until 2002, when tests were being carried out in the area to find a new water supply.  On finding contaminated water, the problem was traced back to the Eppsteiner Straße and this very same piece of land. [Read more…]