Fábrica que originó vertido tóxico en Hungría reanuda su actividad
A toxic red sludge spill from a metals plant that has wiped out all life from one Hungarian river has entered the Danube, one of Europe's largest waterways. Hungary sludge plant 'to re-open' | ||||
| Official says metals plant behind deadly toxic spill could resume production by Thursday as detained executive is freed. | ||||
Last Modified: 13 Oct 2010 16:35 GMT - Hungary has announced that an aluminium plant behind a toxic spill that killed nine people and left scores injured and homeless has been cleared to start production again.
Gyorgy Bakondi, the country's national disaster chief, said production would resume on Thursday or Friday, as the prime minister visited the area around the plant. "We have already switched on the industrial heating. As soon as the system has reached its operational temperature level, we will resume production," he said. The announcement comes a day after the MAL Hungarian Aluminium Production and Trade Company that owned the plant was put under state control, where it will remain for the next two years. The Hungarian government will freeze the assets of MAL and install its own representative or commissioner at the helm, who will then be responsible for resolving the current catastrophe. The death toll from the disaster rose to nine on Wednesday as another victim died in hospital after suffering injuries in the toxic flood, the National Disaster Unit said. Meanwhile, Zoltan Bakonyi, the managing director of MAL who was arrested earlier in the week, has been released from custody, after a judge on Wednesday ruled that prosecutors couldn't substantiate their charges. Al Jazeer's Anita McNaught, reporting from Devecser, one of the towns nearest to the plant, said that Bakonyi had not yet cleared his name. "He has been released from police custody. It does not mean that he will not be rearrested or that other directors of the company themselves might be taken in for questioning or indeed charged as a result of that," she said. Viktor Orban, Hungary's prime minister, has blamed "human negligence" for the spill - which swept over three villages and caused an ecological disaster in a tributary of the Danube River. The latest checks on the walls of the plant's reservoir have shown no further signs of deterioration, after a local village was evacuated over the weekend due to fears that cracks could lead to another spill. In an advance copy of an interview with him in the weekly Figyelo, due to be published on Thursday, he said: "We feel that we are not responsible because our view is that fundamentally it was an unavoidable external force, that is, the development of natural conditions, that caused the catastrophe." "My colleagues have done everything according to the rules," he added. "Arsenic in the air" The Hungarian Academy of Science (HAS) said the heavy metals found in the red mud did not pose a threat.
But it said further checks were needed to determine the full impact of the spill on the soil's ability to sustain life and whether it remained arable. Last Monday's spill affected over 1,000 hectares. There are concerns over the air quality in the affected areas, with Greenpeace warning that residents could breathe in toxins in the mud if dry weather conditions continue. "There is a lot of arsenic in the air, there is also arsenic in the soil samples, there is mercury in the soil samples, there is chrome in the soil samples and many other heavy metals are in the soil samples in different concentrations," Jurrien Westerhof, an engineer for Greenpeace, told Reuters.  Toxic Red Sludge Spill in Hungary Seen From Space. Credit: NASA/Earth Observatory  Toxic Red Sludge Spill in Hungary Seen From Space. Credit: NASA/Earth Observatory On October 9, 2010, the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image of the area. The top image shows a close-up of the alumina plant and closest villages. The bottom image shows the wider region. |
| Hungary toxic sludge enters Danube |
| Officials seek to allay fears of an environmental disaster as corrosive red mud enters Europe's second largest river Last Modified: 07 Oct 2010 |
"The entire ecosystem of the Marcal river has been destroyed, because the very high alkaline levels have killed everything," Tibor Dobson, a spokesman for Hungary's disaster agency, told the Hungarian news agency MTI.
"All the fish are dead and we haven't been able to save the vegetation either," he said.
Residents have also reported local streams to be empty of wildlife.
The corrosive waste, which has high alkaline levels and could contain heavy metals, entered the Danube at around midday local time (10:00 GMT) on Thursday, disaster relief services said.
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