Medard
On the shore of an artificial lake
In the year 2000, brown coal mining ceased at the Medard-Libík Open Pit, which was the last mine in the western part of the Sokolov brown coal district. The pit was created by connecting two surface mines in the late 1980s and early1990s.
In June 2008, the pumping of mine water from the bottom of the open pit ceased, and the filling of the future lake via an artificial canal from the Ohře River commenced two years later. The final water level should reach an elevation of 400 m at the latest by 2013.
With a planned surface area of around 500 hectares, Lake Medard will not be the largest lake in the Sokolov region in the future. In 2038, flooding of the exhausted twin Jiří-Družba Open Pits should commence and create a lake with a surface area of 1 323 hectares, i.e. nearly the same as the Slapská Reservoir (1 392 ha) and twice as large as the Jesenická Reservoir near Cheb (746 ha).
In the future, a planned nature trail should lead to the locality on the former coal mine´s slopes located between the future lake and the town of Habartov. The nature trail should highlight the geological development of the basin (with themes such as “stone logs“, volcanic deposits, pedogenic processes, coal seams), the reminders of earlier underground and surface coal mining (the mouth of the Josef Adit, a section of a seam mined underground), and the main types of reclamation (including animal and plant succession).
The locality remains closed to the public until all reclamation work is completed.
