BUDAPEST/BUCHAREST (dpa) – A little over a year ago some 110,000 tons of hydrocyanic acid spilled from a Romanian mine into the Tisza River, instantly killing all organic life in the water.
A paradise for fish, white-tailed eagles and otters was destroyed, while a region which was just starting to make a name for itself in ecological tourism was ruined.So far, the Tisza has not yet recovered – but the cause of the catastrophe, the “Aurul” mine close to the northwestern Romanian city of Baia Mare, is doing as well as ever.And as if to add ironic insult to injury, around the time of the first anniversary of the Theiss poisoning, a new hydrocyanic acid spill contaminated the Siret River in eastern Romania.At least the Baia Mare incident, which drew intensive international attention, has apparently resulted in the Romanian authorities responding with greater severity to the Siret River case. Criminal investigations are underway at the detergents plant which was responsible, and one suspect has been arrested.This is a first with regard to environmental misdemeanors in Romania, a country where the legal system is already considered to be a shaky one.But in Baia Mare, everything is likely to remain as before. On the basis of a provisional permit, the “Aurul” mine is working at 60 per cent capacity.The Australian operator, Esmeralda, was obligated to strengthen the walls of the cyanide chemicals basin which had burst a year ago and to build a further spillover basin. But neither of these conditions has yet been fulfilled.Nevertheless, the Romanian authorities have extended the provisional operating permit, certainly in a move to save the 1,500 jobs at the “Aurul” mine – despite all the warnings being issued by international environmental groups.What had contributed to the accident a year ago were massive snowfalls followed by a thaw. At the moment a drought is going on in Romania, with people in Baia Mare saying it’s a good thing, too. For the region has no fewer than 11 other basins containing toxic mining wastes which could burst at any moment.While the people in Baia Mare, a centuries-old industry and mining region, have almost become accustomed to their poisoned environment, the inhabitants in the Tisza River region across the border in Hungary are mourning a lost paradise.The environmental catastrophe means nothing less than economic ruin for this Central European peripheral region which had already been passed up by the general surge in the Hungarian economy. One ray of hope had been that quietly and virtually unnoticed, the Tisza River with its backwaters had become a holiday destination for hobby fishermen from Austria and Germany.But now the environmental group Greenpeace paints a dismal picture of what’s left over.“The 53 species of fish which were native to the Tisza are now found only in small sizes, and are often sick or deformed,” it said.Janos Gonczy, the Hungarian official put in charge of trying to restore the Tisza River, says the bio-system is now unsteady and some stretches of the river are “virtually empty”.“We’ll have to await a number of biological cycles to find out whether the original conditions will ever return,” Gonczy said.Hungary has filed damage claims against Esmeralda amounting to 29.4 billion forints (105 million dollars).Budapest is hoping for support in the complicated legal procedures from a report by experts from the European Union which was presented last December. It concluded that the “Aurul” factory was using outdated and no longer acceptable technologies and so should not have been permitted.But it will probably be awhile before any appropriate compensation gets paid, so that people like Jozsef Szegvari, a resident of the city of Szeged who had made his living as a fisherman until the catastrophe, will still have to live from social welfare.“Just recently a friend of mine who’s a barber asked me whether I wanted to start an apprenticeship with him,” the 38-year-old told the newspaper Magyar Nemzet. “I hope he was only joking”.
