Paper short abstract:

Decisions on how to handle and lock eternal burdens are based on partial predictions and models. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork on different kinds of landfill projects this presentation traces the un/making of hydrogeological knowledge in specific locations and contexts.

Paper long abstract:

Eternal burdens will challenge future human-environment systems forever. Current decisions how to handle and lock them are often based on partial and incomplete predictions and models – yet there is a need to organize, plan, implement and manage an increasing number of remnants, leftovers and waste produced by modern lifestyles. Although the complexity of such decisions is widely recognized, in practice the central question is often: Is it safe (enough); is the ground or surrounding solid enough to hold its content or will it crack and put groundwater at risk? This presentation is based on ongoing fieldwork among a network of citizens’ initiatives across Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, and their campaigns against different landfill projects – above and underground, already operating and being planned. Ethnographically unraveling these projects, I trace how hydrogeological knowledge is being made and remade and unmade in and through authorization processes, expert surveys, consultations, monitoring, scientists, legal regulations, and critical publics. I contend that a thorough understanding of how hydrogeologies are known, and un/safety about them is established in specific places is crucial to discuss path dependencies, the difficulties of reorienting such processes once they are launched and the im/possibility of ‘correcting’ once-made mistakes, while taking the need to act in the wake of uncertainty seriously.