On Monday, October 4th, Hungary declared a State of Emergency when a crack in a toxic waste reservoir wall from the Hungarian aluminum production and trading company MAL RT released a gush of highly caustic sludge that completely blanketed sixteen square miles. In total, over 184 million tons of slightly radioactive red sludge, containing heavy metals, such as lead, flooded three towns killing nine people, and injuring over one hundred. Up to two meters (approx. 6.6 ft) of sludge submerged the area, devastating fields, gardens, vehicles, forests, and the ground floors of most houses. Aid and clean up efforts began almost immediately and those burned from the caustic substance were given medical attention and hundreds of police, soldiers, and volunteers worked hosing off houses and shoveling sludge into trucks.
An initial fear, the results of which remain yet to be seen, was that the sludge would flow into and contaminate the Danube river, which flows further from Hungary through Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, and Romania. Within a day three of the Danube’s tributaries were declared dead (devoid of all life) and workers were scrambling to pour plaster, gypsum, and acetic acid (vinegar) into the water to lower the PH, which rose to a high point of 13 on Monday. While long-term effects remain to be seen, fears of a second flood resulting from a full blow out in the reservoir cracks have been largely relieved as authorities assessed the wall as stable.
In the courts, prosecutors of the company’s CEO, Zoltan Bakonyi, are appealing a judge’s ruling that insufficient evidence exists to indict Bakonyi as personally responsible for the blow out, having been aware of the retaining wall’s condition. Meanwhile, hundreds are homeless, without possessions, and unable and unwilling to go back to their homes. Many feel like schoolteacher Maria Gerencser, who told NPR reporters, "the downstairs is finished, my car is finished, my bicycle is finished, the garden, the yard and everything.”
The sludge-slide is one chilling example of the horrible disasters humans are capable of wreaking on the environment. More so, the deluge will have negative impacts on all four spheres, the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The sludge has eliminated all aquatic life in three neighboring rivers, as well as poisoned sixteen acres of gardens, fields, forests, and animals. There has been no official tally of animals killed in the flood. Nevertheless, at a significant disadvantage to humans in terms of being able to save themselves, it is safe to assume that many animals, including nine humans, lost their lives in this tragedy.
Similarly, the sludge poisoned the ground, which is likely to remain unusable for agriculture or habitation for the foreseeable future. The sludge gushed into three tributaries of the Danube and eliminated, in certain areas, all aquatic animal and plant life. Lastly, scientists worry that as the sludge dries, it will be inhaled as dust in the air. This dust will contain carcinogens, which could turn the area near the flood and its victims into a new Chernobyl case.
This article quite simply makes me upset. While I try to have faith in the goodness of humanity, it is difficult to think positive when I see how terribly humankind scars the Earth. I would not call myself a tree-hugger, but it seems logical to me not to bite (or dump toxic sludge) on the hand that feeds and shelters me. Regardless of who is at fault, it seems to me that if making aluminum causes such a caustic and toxic byproduct to be produced, then perhaps we should not produce it at all and do our best with substances that are sustainable, recyclable, and create only an amount of waste that the Earth can process. We are overloading our planet’s natural trash compactor, how could we expect anything other than such drastic consequences?
Sources:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130348994&ps=rs
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130435525
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130546505
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