Hungary counts human and ecological cost of toxic sludge spill

Wed, 06 Oct 2010

Budapest- Two days after a huge spill from a waste reservoir in central Hungary, village streets and vast swathes of countryside were still red on Wednesday with a thick layer of poisonous silt.

The cost of the clean-up will run into billions of forints, or tens of millions of dollars, state secretary for the environment Zoltan Illes said.

The walls of houses in the villages of Kolontar and Devecser are stained red, as high as 2 metres. They bear witness to the scale of the torrent that washed through these rural settlements, leaving four dead and dozens requiring treatment for chemical burns.

Three insurance companies announced that they plan to send on Thursday delegations to the affected area to begin assessing the scale of the financial damage wrought by the leak, the mayor of Devecser told the state news agency MTI.

Meanwhile, hundreds of residents of the worst affected villages are waiting to find out when, if ever, they can return to their poisoned homes.

The Hungarian chemical firm Borsodcham announced it was donating tons of hydrochloric acid to help with the clean up operation.

Government scientists are attempting to neutralize the alkalinity of the red slurry before it flows into tributaries of the Danube river.

The slurry was dangerously caustic due to the sodium hydroxide that is used to extract alumina from bauxite ore, environmental chemist Gergely Simon told the German Press Agency dpa.

It not only burned the skin of many who came in contact with the mud, but also kills plant and animal life, said Simon, who works with the environmental pressure group Clean Air Action Group.
The slurry also contains dangerous heavy metals such as lead and cadmium.

Hundreds of tons of calcium sulphate, essentially plaster of Paris, have been rushed to the area and poured into the Marcal river and elsewhere in a bid to coagulate the mud and prevent it from flowing into the Raba, a tributary of the Danube.

While immediate emergency work is aimed at stopping the spread of contamination, the clean-up of the villages and countryside will take months at least, environment secretary Illes told the news website of the Hungarian fire service.

Hundreds of thousands of tons of polluted topsoil may have to be removed and disposed of safely, Illes said.

Interior Minister Sandor Pinter announced on Tuesday afternoon that the "immediate danger" had passed in the area around the MAL Magyar Aluminium factory in Ajka, 150 kilomteres south-west of the capital Budapest.

Work to repair the damage caused by what many are calling Hungary's worst-ever environmental disaster is just beginning.

Source: The Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/347475,cost-toxic-sludge-spill.html.