Sludge flood an 'ecological disaster'

[irishspirit]

Devecser – Hungary declared a state of emergency in three counties on Tuesday after a flood of toxic red sludge from an aluminium plant engulfed several towns and burned people through their clothes. One official called it "an ecological disaster" that may threaten the Danube and other key rivers.

The toll rose to four dead, six missing and at least 120 people injured after a reservoir failed on Monday at the Ajkai Timfoldgyar plant in Ajka, a town 160km southwest of Budapest, the capital.

Several hundred tons of plaster were being poured into the Marcal River to bind the toxic sludge and prevent it from flowing on, the National Disaster Management Directorate said.

So far, about 1 million cubic metres of sludge has leaked from the reservoir, affecting an estimated 40 square kilometres, Environmental Affairs State Secretary Zoltan Illes told the state news wire MTI.

Illes called the flood an "ecological catastrophe" and said the sludge could reach the Raba and Danube rivers. He suspended activity at the plant and ordered the company to repair the damaged reservoir.

http://www.news24.com/World/News/Sludge-flood-an-ecological-disaster-20101005

What are we doing to this planet?

This thing is burning people through to their very bones.

I am just pig sick with this one.

[theguardian]

Hi irishspirit, Thanks for posting about this terrible disaster.
Im from budapest and i was watching the live coverage on tv, so sad for the people in this village, now Govt are adding some elements in the rivers to reduce the PH, and they said could take 20-30 yrs for the eco system to return to normal.

[irishspirit]

Hi irishspirit, Thanks for posting about this terrible disaster.
Im from budapest and i was watching the live coverage on tv, so sad for the people in this village, now Govt are adding some elements in the rivers to reduce the PH, and they said could take 20-30 yrs for the eco system to return to normal.

Hi The guardian,

20 to 30 years?

That is just shocking. Those poor people. They need to be moved from their ASAP and this area worked on, without delay to reduce the effect on both Nature and the human/animal population there.

Stay Safe

Irish

[Ethereal Blue Being]

This is so horrible and sickening this may be Hungary and The Danube Rivers "Gulf oil spill" Will this leak into ground water ? The article said back in 2003 it was already up to 30 MILLION tons of sludge.My heart goes out to everyone and everything there. Thank you Irishspirit

[Celine]

The footage is so upsetting...

I do not like feeling angry..

so i will focus on empathy for those affected by this horrible disaster...

I sincerly hope there will be some major compensation for all affected...

The land should be closed off.. they should clean it as much as possible and then leave it alone..let Gaia do what she has to.

The planet is very good at healing herself.

[theguardian]

w5IoOIA--SE

[irishspirit]

Toxic sludge spill reaches Danube

A flow of toxic mud reached Hungary's Danube river on Thursday morning and is threatening to contaminate the waterway's ecosystem, the national water authority has confirmed. Hungary has opened a criminal investigation into the spill, which has already killed four people and forced hundreds more to leave their homes.

The poisonous mud, spilled from a reservoir at an aluminium plant in the west of the country on Monday, reached the Danube at around 6.30 am GMT Thursday at Győr in the north-west, via the connecting Raab river.

Alkaline levels in the Danube's waters are higher than normal, a water board official told AFP news agency.

Samples taken at the meeting of the Danube and Raab rivers show alkalinity of around 8.96 to 9.07 per cent, compared to a usual level of eight per cent.

http://www.english.rfi.fr/environment/20101007-toxic-sludge-spill-reaches-danube

[irishspirit]

New Hungarian government figures on the red sludge flood show that the volume of muck that escaped from a burst reservoir was almost as high as the blown-out BP oil well spewed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Government officials said Friday that 600,000 to 700,000 cubic meters (158 million to 184 million gallons) of sludge escaped and inundated three villages before entering the Danube.

The oil spill amounted to more than 200 million gallons. That translates into 757,000 cubic meters.

Government officials previously calculated the volume of the sludge spill at 1 million cubic meters, or 264 million gallons.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

http://www.newser.com/article/d9ine94g0/hungarian-officials-recalculate-volume-of-red-sludge-flood-almost-as-much-as-gulf-oil-spill.html

[Solace]

We got our own "little oilspill" in Hungary. :(

There are rumours, that it has radioactive elements too. The government (ofcourse) says, it's not.

Here are some pictures:

http://img259.imageshack.us/i/devecs3.jpg/
http://img337.imageshack.us/i/iszap5.jpg/
http://img256.imageshack.us/i/devecs1.jpg/
http://img140.imageshack.us/i/m1fyomfjustm.jpg/
http://img242.imageshack.us/i/m1ayrb3jogtl.jpg/
http://img88.imageshack.us/i/devecs5.jpg/

[Fredkc]

Incredibly nasty pics Solace.

So.. who owns this Aluminum factory, anyway?

I think they should have the honor of being at least as famous as BP. ;)
After all, they've sure earned it.

Fred

[Solace]

So.. who owns this Aluminum factory, anyway?
Fred

They...
http://english.mal.hu/Engine.aspx

[Eric J (Viking)]

Yes this is bloody awful...let's hope it doesn't remain as toxic to the 'Danube'... Any news as to the main cause? My brain is ticking overtime!!

Viking

[Beth]

http://www.realdeal.hu/20101008/the-murky-business-behind-hungarys-red-sludge-crisis


According to Index's piece - which is titled approximately "Who are behind the company causing the mud disaster?" - the aluminum industry was one of the most vibrant economic sectors in communist-era Hungary, which naturally made such firms attractive to the company managers and other well-connected insiders who rushed in to "spontaneously" privatize the country's industrial assets after the collapse of communism. And because the industry has remained lucrative, some of those who ended up with these assets are today among Hungary's richest individuals.

From 1963 until the system change, the whole industry was in the hands of a mammoth corporation called Magyar Alumíniumipari Tröszt, which by the 1980s was - despite potentially strong fundamentals - sliding into decline. After the return to power of the left in the mid-1990s, the government of then-premier Gyula Horn decided that the company would not be privatized (unlike many other industrial assets) but stabilized in such a way as not to put pressure on the state budget, which was then under severe pressure. As part of the stabilization plan, the management was allowed to sell off certain units of the company, including Köfém (light metal factory), which was bought by Alcoa, the leading US-based aluminum manufacturer.

In 1996, the Magyar Alumínium Részvénytársaság (Hungarian Aluminum Company; Mal) was formed, apparently with the aim of picking up some of these other assets. Its initial top management team included Béla Petrusz (CEO), Lajos Tolnay (president, top photo at left), and Árpád Bakonyi (assistant director, below). The company was transformed in 2000, and is today called Mal Magyar Alumínium Termelő és Kereskedelmi Zrt, but the key owners and decision-makers remain these same three men. (Árpád Bakonyi's son Zoltán Bakonyi is now Mal's managing director (cégvezető), while one Martin Rümmelein - apparently an Austrian - is listed as the CEO.)

[Snowbird]

This may very well be a case of, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

[irishspirit]

Hungary sludge reservoir at risk of collapse

AJKA, Hungary – The walls of a red sludge reservoir in Hungary were "very likely" going to collapse, the prime minister said Saturday as the government rushed to prevent another deluge like the one earlier this week that killed at least seven people.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban described the situation as "dramatic" and said the town of Kolontar, which sits next to the reservoir and was badly damaged in Monday's flood, was evacuated as a precaution because engineers have determined that the developing cracks could cause a whole side of the enormous container to collapse.

"Cracks have appeared on the northern wall of the reservoir which makes it very likely that the whole wall will collapse," Orban told reporters gathered at a fire station in Ajka, a city near Kolontar where many of its resident have been evacuated. "The wall is in very bad shape."

"We have started to build dams in the direction of the populated areas to slow the flow of the material in case of a new incident," Orban said.

The prime minister said experts had estimated that — depending how dense the sludge was — an estimated 500,000 cubic meters more of red sludge could escape from the reservoir if the wall collapsed, but said exact figures were hard to calculate. Orban said that amount would be about half the scale of the initial sludge flood.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_hungary_sludge_flood

[irishspirit]

Photographic evidence shows scandal: toxic sludge pool leaking for months

The WWF has published a photo from June 2010, which proves that the poison sludge basin of the bauxite plant in Ajka was already leaking for months and red mud flowed. "Das Unglück und die bisher sieben Todesopfer hätten leicht verhindert werden können, wenn die Betreiber ihrer Sorgfaltspflicht nachgekommen wären", sagte Andreas Beckmann, Direktor des WWF-Donauprogramms. "The accident and the current seven deaths could have been easily prevented if the operator had complied with their duty of care," said Andreas Beckmann, director of WWF's Danube program. Der jüngste Beweis, dass das Becken bereits seit Monaten desolat war und stark leckte muss sofort untersucht werden. The recent evidence that the pool was rather bleak for months and heavily licked must be investigated immediately. Dies gilt nicht nur für das Unfallbecken sondern auch für alle anderen Giftschlammbecken in Ungarn", fordert Beckmann, denn "diese Fahrlässigkeit und die Mängel bei den Sicherheitsvorschriften waren die Ursache für die größte Umweltkatastrophe in der Geschichte Ungarns." This applies not only to the accident pool but also for all other toxic sludge pool in Hungary, "says Beckmann, since" such negligence and deficiency in the safety regulations were the cause of the greatest environmental disaster in the history of Hungary. "

http://translate.google.de/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wwf.at%2Fde%2Fmenu45%2Fsubartikel1617%2F

Sorry folks, we will have to deal with the google translated page here.

[Swami]

Photographic evidence shows scandal: toxic sludge pool leaking for months

The WWF has published a photo from June 2010, which proves that the poison sludge basin of the bauxite plant in Ajka was already leaking for months and red mud flowed. "Das Unglück und die bisher sieben Todesopfer hätten leicht verhindert werden können, wenn die Betreiber ihrer Sorgfaltspflicht nachgekommen wären", sagte Andreas Beckmann, Direktor des WWF-Donauprogramms. "The accident and the current seven deaths could have been easily prevented if the operator had complied with their duty of care," said Andreas Beckmann, director of WWF's Danube program. Der jüngste Beweis, dass das Becken bereits seit Monaten desolat war und stark leckte muss sofort untersucht werden. The recent evidence that the pool was rather bleak for months and heavily licked must be investigated immediately. Dies gilt nicht nur für das Unfallbecken sondern auch für alle anderen Giftschlammbecken in Ungarn", fordert Beckmann, denn "diese Fahrlässigkeit und die Mängel bei den Sicherheitsvorschriften waren die Ursache für die größte Umweltkatastrophe in der Geschichte Ungarns." This applies not only to the accident pool but also for all other toxic sludge pool in Hungary, "says Beckmann, since" such negligence and deficiency in the safety regulations were the cause of the greatest environmental disaster in the history of Hungary. "

http://translate.google.de/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wwf.at%2Fde%2Fmenu45%2Fsubartikel1617%2F

Sorry folks, we will have to deal with the google translated page here.

Translation is pretty good irishspirit...

I mailed a friend working and living in Hungaria, havent heard from him yet.........
Lets see what stories he comes up with.....

[irishspirit]

Swami,

Please let us know on that one this is not a good situation these people find themselves in at all. This is very much in your face type of stuff, unlike the Golf Oil Crime, where they where able ton hide it.

Thanks

Irish

[Beth]

LINK (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101011/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_hungary_sludge_flood)

DEVECSER, Hungary – Hungarian police have detained the director of the aluminum company responsible for a flood of caustic red sludge that killed eight people when it burst from its reservoir last week, the prime minister said Monday.

Police said they were questioning managing director Zoltan Bakonyi on suspicion of public endangerment causing multiple deaths and environmental damage.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban told parliament that the government wanted to take over MAL Rt., the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, because the safe restart of production at the alumina plant was needed to save the jobs of thousands of workers.

Orban said his administration was also freezing the company's assets to ensure that funds were available to compensate for the damages caused by the disaster.

"Since this is not a natural catastrophe but the damage was brought about by people, the damages must be paid first and foremost not by taxpayers but by those who caused the damage," Orban told lawmakers.

[Ethereal Blue Being]

Can we get an update on the red sludge. I understand it is in the Danube River. horriffic. What is the future for the river and the people. Do they have it under control, or is it in the soil, ground water,and rivers and streams and there to stay for centuries or milinnium ?