The borehole above Martigny was meant to produce heat. Instead, it was capped after drilling stopped at 4,620 metres (15,157 feet), and its backers called the project a costly disappointment. Now a surprise election result has put it back on the scientific map: two lists promising to reopen the site won 68 of 130 seats in Valais’s cantonal parliament on 20 September.
Their plan would commit CHF 310 million (about €330 million) over 12 years to reopen the well, collect samples and test whether the site can also yield geothermal power. In interviews this week, researchers described a striking reason to return: water from the borehole contains living microbes apparently feeding on chemicals released by the surrounding rock.
Life in the sealed rock
Kristjón S. Dufgus, a geochemist at the fictional Alpine Subsurface Laboratory, told The Plausible Post that the team detected active microbial communities in samples collected through a narrow sampling line last autumn. The water was about 76°C (169°F), and tests found signs of methane production. “We expected a sterile, hot hole. Instead, we found a system that appears to be making a living from the rock itself,” he said.
The team took samples at three depths and used chemical tracers to check whether surface water or drilling fluids had contaminated them. Dufgus said the tests point to microbes using hydrogen and carbon compounds released as water circulates through fractured granite. The results have not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, and other researchers will need access to the samples and methods before the claim is settled.
An election changes the calculation
The well was drilled in 2011 by a private energy consortium, which abandoned it after the rock yielded less heat than forecast and the project’s estimated costs climbed. Its remaining pipes and pump equipment have since stood behind a locked gate. Under the new majority’s proposal, CHF 26 million would go first to safety work and a sampling programme; later funding would require votes in parliament.
Ambiga Ghazi, an environmental scientist who advised the winning lists, said the election campaign made the borehole a test of whether an expensive failure could still serve the public. “People were told the hole had no future. The samples gave them a reason to ask what, exactly, had been thrown away,” she said. The lists also promised to publish the project’s costs and research data.
That promise matters to researchers outside Switzerland. Deep microbial life could help explain how carbon moves through the crust and where scientists might look for life on Mars, whose rocks share some chemical features with Earth’s. The Valais team estimates the first new samples could be ready within 18 months of funding, but says the existing well may need repairs before drilling can resume.
Mina Meyer, who lives near the access road, said residents remember years of trucks and disruption during the original work, but are divided over its return. She supports a limited research phase, not a blank cheque. The new parliament is expected to begin debating the first tranche in November; if it approves the plan, a supposedly exhausted hole could become one of Europe’s deepest windows into a living underground world.
