Heritage at Risk

In the old industrial western world many industrial buildings have been abandoned during the last three decades. There are examples where large complicated industrial buildings and whole industrial areas have been a starting point for a local renewal on the historical basis with museums in the center. We have also seen transformations of old industrial sites to universities, hotels, dwellings, restaurants, new kinds of workshops etc. At the same time there are a lot of works and areas that are too large and polluted and very difficult to transform for new purposes. Especially old mines which have produced copper, zinc, led, silver and gold containing a lot of sulphur contaminations leaves from a sustainability standpoint a difficult heritage. Furthermore, the mines often include wide dam systems, important because it gave both power to the water wheels and prevented the water from the surroundings to flow into the deep mines. But who takes responsibility for the old areas and all the equipment after the mines have been closed? In Falun in Dalarna there is a very old copper mine which first was closed 1992 by the international company Stora Enso and some years later by UNESCO was appointed to be a World Heritage Site. When the company left the area a Foundation took over the responsibility for the maintenance, but it lack both the economic resources and knowledge to keep the complicated dam system entirely intact. The question is consequently, who has the responsibility for this kind of heritage, who pays for a sustainable maintenance and how do we build up a knowledge base to manage the risks when the industrial company has left.