Actions by the Department for Mining Impacts and Relocations

- In early March 2005, Vattenfall felled 20 fruit trees in the garden of the last remaining original resident of Horno W. Domain, although the legal proceedings for the property transferral were still ongoing. Supposedly, this was an error on the part of the sub-contractor (information printed in the regional newspaper Lausitzer Rundschau on 16 March 2005 and others).
In the light of the explosive nature of the subject regarding the last remaining original landowner and his property, the public does not consider the story of an error credible, nor should the error have happened in the first place under correct management.
The above mentioned sub-contractor Torsten Koalik was already involved in previous destruction activities of then the LAUBAG company in 1999, which resulted in reporting an offence of attempted dangerous injury.

- Also in early March, a resident in Lacoma village felt threatened and insulted by security services of Vattenfall. The man, also Church elder of Cottbus district Willmersdorf, was outraged and informed the press (see Lausitzer Rundschau on 04 March 2005). J. Kretschmar as manager in charge was present at the scene at that time and refused to act as a mediator. The resident felt ridiculed by his behaviour.
Vattenfall asked about a dozen employees of the same security service (M. Klemm SDS) back in autumn 2003 to march into the village in order to intimidate environmental activists. There is evidence that the security company recruits their employees from the rightwing scene. Press releases and freelance filmmakers utilised the events to stir up opinion against Vattenfall.

- Drastic violations of protected species laws occurred during demolition work. For example, a demolition company employed by Vattenfall removed an important hibernation site of Red-bellied Toads in Mach 2004. It is likely that many hundred individuals of this highly protected species, who had not yet left the hibernation site, died on the scene. The Environment Agency intervened and stopped the works.
Although the company should have learned from this experience and works would have been possible during the summer without problems, the incident was repeated in December 2004 in almost identical fashion.
The efforts of other parts of the company to create a nature conservation friendly image were torpedoed by those actions. The concept proposed by Vattenfall, to relocate the population of Red-bellied toads from the Lacoma Wetlands, lost its credibility in the eyes of the public.