Romanian Cyanide Spill Poisons Danube Region
2/13/00
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Title: Romanian Cyanide Spill Poisons Danube Region
Source: Agence France-Presse
Status: Copyright 2000, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: February 13. 2000
BUDAPEST, Feb 13 (AFP) - A cyanide spill from a goldmine in Romania
has poisoned the Danube region, killing off all life in the largest
Danube tributary the Tisza in Hungary and the damage is spreading to
Yugoslavia, experts said Sunday.
The cyanide solution from the Aurul goldmine in the Romanian Sasar
was floating towards Yugoslavia Sunday, but it left tons of dead fish
and waterbirds along its path in Hungary, Gyoergy Csizmadia, said a
biologist from Szeged university.
"So far, more than 100 tons of dead fish were removed from the Tisza
in Hungary, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. A lot have drifted
on to Yugoslavia, so we cannot exactly tell about quantities," Karoly
Pinter of the Hungarian agriculture ministry told AFP Sunday.
But he said it was not the cyanide that posed the greatest danger.
"The cyanide gets diluted but heavy metal parts which are extremely
poisonous have been deposited in the mud. These disintegrate much
slower and poison the environment for much longer," he said.
Hungarians were praying on Sunday for the revival of the Tisza, their
second-biggest river. People were paying visits to the Tisza to sing
folk songs inspired by the river and to look hopefully for signs of
life.
Although cyanide levels in Hungary were considered to be safe again
bu Sunday, after the poison drifted on to Yugoslavia, Hungarian
authorities maintain the disaster is the largest-scale environmental
catastrope in the region since the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown
in 1986.
"It is as if a neutron bomb were dropped. All living organisms have
been destroyed. This is the worst central-east European ecological
catastrophe since Chernobyl," said Zoltan Illes, chairman of the
Hungarian parliament's environment committee.
Some 100,000 cubic metres (3.5 million cubic feet) of cyanide, which
is used to extract gold from waste, was released into the river when
a reservoir wall collapsed at the Aurul gold mine at Sasar, northern
Romania.
It first entered the Somes river, from where it flowed into the
Tisza, which is a tributary of the Danube in Yugoslavia.
Hungarian officials warned that settling healthy fish to the rivers
from elsewhere would only save some of the waterbirds.
"The fish are only the top of the food chain. But what will the fish
feed on? The small crabs, snails, waterplants have all been killed.
The birds have already left, they realised they cannot expect food
from the Tisza," said conservationist Ferenc Kasza.
Hungary has signalled it will seek compensation for the damage from
Romania and the Australian Esmeralda Explorations, co-owners of the
Aurul mine.
"We must seek to get compensation to revitalise the Tisza," Prime
Minister Viktor Orban told a meeeting of his party Saturday, adding a
government commissioner would be nominated to handle the issue.
His party, the Fidesz-MPP, criticised Esmeralda for exporting
technology which endangers the environment.
"It is unacceptable that on the threshold of the third millennium in
Europe, the health of hundreds of thousands of people and the whole
eco-system of great rivers is being threatened in the sole hope of
material gain," a party statement said.
Officials here also criticised Esmeralda for playing down the danger.
Meanwhile, Hungarian and Romanian authorities were working together
to assess the damage.