Ecological disaster in Hungary

South of Hungary, downstream the Danube, Romania is on high alert following the ecological disaster in the neighboring country.

The spill from the aluminum reservoir of the plant in Ajka, 160 km from Budapest, has worried both authorities, experts and the media in Bucharest.

They are all warning that the hundreds of tons of alkaline sludge and heavy metals, spilled across 40 square metres, have been taken to the Danube by rain and have already affected Romania, after crossing Serbia and Bulgaria.

Romanian specialists believe, though, that the over 700 kilometers to the border and the high level of the Danube at the entrance to the country are enough to dilute the sludge and thus diminish the effects of the pollution.

The heads of the National Authority for Scientific Research are convinced there will be no ecological disaster on Romanian soil, though they admit both the flora and the fauna will be affected.

The greens with the World Wildlife Fund are more pessimistic though. Four people killed, 120 wounded and dozens of animals stifled by the wave of red sludge is evidence enough of the danger.

Experts with the well known Greenpeace organization, quoted by the Reuters News Agency also talk abut an ecological disaster that exceeds in scale the one in Baia Mare, north-western Romania, back in 2000, when over 100 thousand cubic meters of cyanide and heavy metal waste water got spilled into the Tisa River, reaching Hungary.

The daily Gandul writes that the accidents are quite similar and recalls that back then, following the principle according to which the polluter must pay, Romania paid Hungary 120 million Euro worth of damages.

How much is Hungary going to pay?, the daily asks rhetorically, writing that in 2000 the Prime Minister was the same Viktor Orban, “who hurried into calling for damages, and criticized Romania for its negligence months in a row”.

The daily Romania Libera also recalls the Baia Mare accident, writing about the other side of the coin.

The daily is worried mainly about the effects of the disaster on the Danube Delta, a unique area in Europe, inhabited by rare species of animals and plants, a site on the UNESCO heritage list.

The media in Bucharest are also wondering whether the tone adopted by the Romanian Ministry of the Environment is so comforting because the Environment Minister Laszlo Borbely is a member of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, the political party of the Hungarian community in Romania.