The government is promising tougher border checks and increased monitoring of remote farmland after discovering more than a dozen sites, mostly in north Bohemia, that German businesses have been using to illegally dump their garbage.

Nearly 60 inspectors from the Czech Environmental Inspection (ČIŽP), the investigative arm of the Environment Ministry, are now trying to gauge the extent of months of illicit waste disposal that appears to be the result of secret agreements between Czech and German businesses.

Some 15,000 metric tons (16,535 short tons) of German trash has been discovered in the country to date. The ČIŽP has slapped 300,000 Kč ($12,600) fines on four Czech companies, but authorities fear many more dumpsites will be found as investigations continue.

"We are only at the beginning of our research," says Eva Rolečková, spokeswoman for the ČIŽP. "What we found so far is just the tip of the iceberg."

It remains to be seen what this waste war portends for Czech-German relations, which have been on the mend since last summer, when Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek made his historic apology for the expulsion of Sudeten Germans antifascists from the Czech lands after World War II. So far, German authorities have reacted coolly to concerns about the dumping, with some claiming not to know anything about it and others saying the allegations are politically motivated.

Irina Duevel, spokeswoman for the Environment Ministry in the German state of Saxony, suggested this latest row is payback for the bad press Czechs received after a cyanide spill last month in east Bohemia threatened German water supplies.

"In the cyanide case in January, German papers wrote that their neighbors were poisoning them," she says. "Now Czechs say that Germans are dumping in their backyards."

'Worth the trouble'

The sites uncovered to date lay mostly on deserted farmland owned by either individuals or businesses. Some of the most recent finds include ones in Martiněves and Frýdlant, north Bohemia, Feb. 13; Stříbro, west Bohemia, Feb. 15; and in the Lužické mountains, a protected nature area, Feb. 19.

One dump on a farm in Libčeves, north Bohemia, was set on fire twice this month to destroy evidence, authorities say.

The ongoing investigation so far has not uncovered exactly how the dumping took place. Authorities say German and Czech businesses worked together: In some cases, German waste companies contacted Czech transport companies and offered to pay if their waste was picked up and hauled away; in other cases, Czech transport companies contacted German waste companies and offered their services.

Three of the companies that have received fines are BAU 24 in Prague, Slansped in Kladno and Halová Dana in Šluknov. None would talk to The Prague Post. The name of the fourth company fined has not been released.

In most cases, authorities say, trash made it into the Czech Republic because the country allows other nations to dispose of waste here as long as it is recycled, not stored. And European Union membership has softened border checks on commercial vehicles here, as it has elsewhere in Europe.

Last month in Libčeves, customs officers found identification documents for DUX, a German waste company based in Halle in the state of Saxony-Anhalt.

DUX had signed contracts with BAU 24.

"If all contracted waste had been brought in, BAU 24 would have earned up to 100 million Kč," said Vlasta Staňková, mayor of Libčeves. Catching them, she says, "is worth the trouble."

Forced to look elsewhere

German waste companies have been looking to export their refuse ever since their country began answering to environmental concerns about pollution and waste management.

Since June of last year, Germany has been operating under tougher regulations involving waste disposal. First, the country closed 200 of its 333 official dumpsites. Then, the German Environmental Ministry told waste companies they had to either burn or compost their waste rather than store it. Both options are expensive.

Those regulations spawned the search for shortcuts and cheaper options in some cases.

"Of course, in Germany, environmental regulations on disposal are fairly strict," says Marina Klüber, owner of a disposal and recycling company in the eastern German state of Thuringia. "But some companies are just too lazy to conceive long-term methods for efficient disposal."

Guido Koschany, a waste disposal expert with the German Federal Association of Freight Traffic, Logistics and Disposal (BGL), says the new regulations left some companies with waste they could not get rid of, and many looked to the Czech Republic.

Since 2005, mobile customs units have stopped 36 Czech and German trucks loaded with illegal garbage bound for the Czech Republic.

"We will now try to return the already-delivered waste as well," says Karolina Šulová, a spokeswoman of the Czech Interior Ministry.

Three trucks containing German domestic waste were sent back to Germany Feb. 6.

Šulová says returning the trash will be difficult because it is hard to determine exactly who brought it there.

No official call for help

It appears German companies are not just looking here.

"We have information that other ex-socialist countries are dealing with the same problem," says Jiří Barták, head of public relations of the Czech General Directorate of Customs.

Environment Minister Libor Ambrozek has called on Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to weigh in on the issue during next month's meeting of the Visegrad Four.

Ambrozek also planned to ask his German counterpart to inform the German public that dumping trash in the Czech Republic is illegal.

German authorities have so far said the Czech side has not approached them about the trash problem.

"We did not get an official call for help," says Juergen Maass, spokesman for the German Environment Ministry. "But we have deliberately offered cooperation on the working level, including border controls."

In Germany, each region is responsible for its own waste disposal, and Saxony-Anhalt officials said they would take the garbage back if it came from there.