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There are a lot of lignite mines, which have been flooded already. During mining ground water is usually pumped out of the mine, to prevent flooding. So if you stop mining and pumping, the mine would flood anyway. However that would also wash out minerals and cause some serious problems on the “shore” of the new lake. So usually it is better to flood it as fast as possible.
The issue is that these mines are among the largest in Europe. Garzweiler as well as Bełchatów. However for Garzweiler we are talking 1/30 of the water the Rhine has near Colonge. It is bad, but certainly possible.
1/30 of the Rhine water near Colonge is massive. That is one of Europes biggest rivers and taking that much amount of water out is serious. We are talking about problems with shipping and water management in the netherlands, increased salinity in the north sea and so on. And if you take a look at the Spree, stopping pumping up the groundwater has its own problems. Berlin is depending on water from the Spree which is coming from pumped up groundwater. Stopping that will change a whole river system that grew over decades.
I saw a model on this: If the drainage water from the open-pit mines stops flowing, the Spreewald upstream from Berlin will evaporate as much water as would otherwise flow into the Spree without drainage… This is bad news for Berlin, which obtains a significant portion of its drinking water from the Spree’s bank filtrate.
Sorry, but it is 1/30 of the water which flows past Cologne in the Rhine in a year to fill up the entire Garzweiler mine. So basically diverting the Rhine for a bit more then 12 days. I realize that what I wrote was easy to misunderstand.
But the key here is that the alternative is to keep the pumps running forever. Otherwise you get an acid lake with collapsing walls. Obviously keeping the pumps running also causes massive problems. I am sure they find a solution for Berlin as well.