Posted on 06 April 2011
Kolontár, Hungary: Six months after
being deluged by a tide of toxic red sludge,
towns downstream of the failed alumina tailings
dam near Ajka, Hungary remain ruined and
largely deserted, with residents and former
residents still waiting for authorities
to deliver on much of the promised assistance.
Elsewhere in Eastern
Europe, residents of other towns threatened
by tailings dams are noting that little
has been done to reduce the risks hanging
over their communities.
More than one million
cubic metres of the toxic sludge burst from
the Ajka tailings dam on 4 October 2010,
inundating the towns of Kolontár,
Devecser and Somlóvásárhely.
Ten died and more than 100 were injured,
with the mud covering hectares of farmland
and forest and spilling into Danube tributaries,
the Marcal and Torna rivers.
On a six month review,
WWF-Hungary noted that around 300 buildings
have been demolished and the impact on lives
and livelihoods in the area remains severe.
Streets are empty, and the red stain of
the mud remains often all too visible.
“Many people came here
and promised a lot of things, but we’ve
seen nothing. The sludge destroyed our best
fields, now we can’t make a living”, one
local man told WWF Hungary.
Clean up efforts continue
in some areas, but seem to be themselves
tailing off.
According to the mayor
of Devecser, Tamas Toldi, the sludge and
toxic soil are in the process of being cleared
with about 5000 cubic metres are being transported
back to one of the tailing pools each day.
But as there are no funds left, there will
be only partial replacement of the soil.
A biomass plantation
is now planned for these fields to make
biogas and green electricity. Locals are
starting to accept the idea, but are still
looking for investors.
Wildlife and fishlife
were totally devastated or displaced from
the area, and six months later, the banks
of the Marcal and Torna are still red. Currently,
toxic soil is being removed from the banks
of the rivers.
“Legislation was amended
to add red sludge reservoirs to the category
of buildings for which stricter requirements
are necessary and to make mining inspectorates
the responsible authority for the management
of mining waste as opposed to local municipalities,
which had no capacity or knowledge to complete
this task. ," said Gábor Figeczky,
CEO of WWF-Hungary.
"But no other measures
were taken to prevent other similar disasters
from happening.”
Threat posed by dozens
if not hundreds of similar sites
"Six months after
Hungary’s worst environmental disaster,
we still cannot be sure of the threat posed
by dozens if not hundreds similar sites
throughout the region," said Andreas
Beckmann, Director of the WWF Danube-Carpathian
Programme.
"WWF calls on the
European Commission and national governments
to urgently undertake a comprehensive review
of risky sites as well as of existing legislation
and measures in order to ensure that such
a disaster does not happen again”,
“There are close to
20 tailings dams in Bulgaria alone. Some
of them have been decommissioned, but the
heavy metals are still buried in the ground
and pose a potential significant threat
to human health and nature, particularly
because many of them are situated next to
rivers and the pollution can spread quickly.”
he added.
The biggest tailings
dam in the Balkans is Medet. Situated above
the town of Pirdop in central Bulgaria,
it contains 200 million tones of heavy metals
residues. The dam was built in the basin
of Topolnitsa river, which flows into Maritsa,
a major river in southern Bulgaria and northern
Greece.
“Out of the top 30 most
polluted places in Bulgaria, we are ranked
number seven”, said Ivo Georgiev, mayor
of the village of Dushanci, situated close
to Medet.
“Underground waters
from Medet seep through Zhekov vir dam,
constructed right next to the tailings dam.
Zhekov vir is situated above the village
and the village lives with the threat of
50 million cubic metres of residue flooding
its land."
Inadequate enforcement
of inadequate recommendations
Experts identify inadequate
enforcement of inadequate regulations as
a key issue in a string of spills in the
area, of which two most serious were the
Hungary mud disaster and an earlier cyanide
spill from a tailings dam in Romania.
“Our society expects
that the facilities still in use are being
exploited correctly and safety procedures
are being observed. In reality this is not
the case”, said Daniel Popov, a toxics expert
from the CEE Bankwatch Network in Bulgaria.
"To begin with,
none of the privatized old facilities in
Bulgaria and almost none of the newly built
ones, have been isolated with impermeable
membranes made out of high density polyethylene
to prevent hazardous wastes and their leachates
going into the ground. This omission sets
these facilities apart from the best practices
in the mining industry today”, Popov said.
“Many facilities allocate
in their annual budgets funds for covering
fines
"When systematic
infringement occurs in theory the facility
should be closed until the problem is solved.
The fact that this is not happening, shows
complete disregard for one of the basic
principles of the European community’s water
management policy – “Polluters pay” - where
the idea is that the fines are so big that
the industry has an incentive to invest
in better and cleaner technologies.”
Greek MEP Michalis Tremopoulos,
the only elected green MEP from the Balkans,
has taken it upon himself to help solve
environmental issues across the region.
He says that the situation
in the Balkans is worsening instead of improving
and that the standards for crisis management
are quite low because of increased costs.
He is in the process of collecting data
about cases when toxic spills have occurred
but the local population has not been made
aware.
“We are encouraging
environmental organizations from the Balkan
countries to send us relevant information”,
he says.
In his opinion the European
Commission has an important role to play
to prevent toxic spills occurring in the
region in the future.
“First of all the Commission
must adopt the European Parliament resolution
against the use of cyanide in mining activities.
There have been amendments to the Seveso
II Directive, which included mineral processing
of ores, tailings ponds or dams, an amendment
to the Hazardous Waste List to include certain
mining wastes, a best available techniques
reference document on waste rock and tailings,
a legislative instrument on the management
of mining waste. The last point resulted
in the Mining Waste Directive (Directive
2006/21/EC on the Management of Waste from
the Extractive Industries). This Directive
covers only the most damaging waste and
needs adequate implementation. This last
“detail” needs further attention”, he said.
+ More
Forest friends winners
start replanting in tiger habitat
Posted on 08 April 2011
- Pekanbaru, Indonesia — As a follow-up
from last year’s campaign by the youth initiative
Forest Friends, the first section of 106
hectares of critical habitat for the Sumatran
tiger that had been deforested by illegal
activity is being replanted with local tree
species.
The first phase of replanting
activities, covering 30 hectares, is taking
place in Tesso Nilo National Park, on the
island of Sumatra in Indonesia from 29 March
to 30 June 2011.
Forest Friends is an initiative targeted
at 18- to 25-year-old youths using social
networking tools. Under the initiative,
three youths each from Indonesia and Germany
were selected after an intense weeks-long
selection to compete for fans and raise
support for forest conservation through
blogging.
Through Forest Friends,
which is also accessible on Facebook, the
youths communicate and share their views
via articles, video and photo uploads. The
blogging competition took place from May
to August 2010, serving as an integral part
of WWF’s Year of Tiger Campaign in 2010,
which aimed at doubling wild tiger numbers
by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger. At
the end of the competition the youths had
successfully raised support for replanting
more than 100 hectares of land.
The winning team from the Forest Friends
competition, Rima Putri Agustina (a 25-year-old
from Indonesia) and Lena Gottschalk (a 20-year-old
from Germany), visited the park from March
28 to April 2. Both initiated the planting
of a variety of local tree species such
as Shorea and Koompassia, joining WWF, the
Tesso Nilo National Park authority, rangers,
and the local community.
WWF-Indonesia will work
with Tesso Nilo National Park authorities
and local communities on management and
monitoring of the replanted area.
“As one of the six Forest
Friends finalists, I'm very happy and proud
that so many young people became fans and
supported our campaign," said Gottschalk.
"I am so excited to have the opportunity
to visit the park and be directly involved
in the planting along with various partners
on the ground."
The head of Tesso Nilo National Park authority,
Drh. Hayani Suprahman, MSc, stated his support
for the replanting efforts: “I appreciate
the Forest Friends campaign for its contribution
to biodiversity in Tesso Nilo National Park
and our conservation work in the national
park.”
Encroachment by local
villagers, who clear the forest to plant
crops or build settlements, is one of the
major threats to the national park. To combat
the threats, national park authorities conduct
extensive patrols, along with partners such
as WWF-Indonesia. The Tesso Nilo Patrol
Team is actively involved in law enforcement
and the socialization process, distributing
information about encroachment threats to
nature.
“The next crucial step
is to replant and rejuvenate ecosystems
in the encroached critical areas,” Suprahman
added.
The Park, also a critical habitat for Sumatran
tigers, was chosen as the replanting site
because it has potential for long-term tiger
conservation.
In addition to planting
trees in Tesso Nilo, the Forest Friends
winners experienced a day in the life of
the WWF-Indonesia Tiger Research Team, rode
through the jungle and went on patrol with
the WWF Flying Squad’s elephants, in addition
to visiting a traditional sustainable honey
production operation in the nearby village
area.
“One of the best things from the Forest
Friends competition is to know that we will
reforest and plant trees in such a huge
area, which someday could be a safe haven
for critically endangered Sumatran endemic
species, and also for people who live around
the forest," said Rima. "I do
really hope that this effort works, so we
never hear any more bad news about Sumatran
forests."
As part of their activities
during the trip, Rima and Lena made a jungle
documentary that will be shared on the Forest
Friends blog. It is hoped that the documentary
will inspire other youth to give back to
their environment, not only in Sumatra,
but worldwide.
Sumatra's approximate
tiger population numbers just 300, out of
a total of only 3,200 for the highly endangered
big cat.
