Toxic Mud Spill Latest Insult to

Polluted Danube River

National Geographic
BY K E R T H A N , F O R N AT I O N A L G E O G RA P H I C N E W S

PUBLISHED OCTOBER 14, 2010

This story is part of a special news series on global water

issues

The recent reservoir failure that flooded several towns in Hungary with toxic red
mud is the latest environmental insult to Europe's Danube River. But it is not the
first, nor the worst, disaster of its kind, experts say.
And unless steps are taken to safeguard similar industrial plants and mining
facilities around the world, these kinds of accidents will continue to happen, they
warn.

On October 4, a so-called tailing dam that held waste products, including arsenic
and mercury, from the Ajkai Timfoldgyar aluminum-processing plant in the town of
Ajkai, Hungary, collapsed. This released an estimated 184 million gallons (697
million liters) of highly alkaline red mud into the Marcal River and nearby towns, as
a consequence at least eight people died. The toxic flood reached the Danube
River—Europe’s second-largest river—last Thursday, sparking fears of
downstream contamination.
Tibor Dobson, a spokesman for the team, said that for this reason there were
sporadic fish deaths in the Raba and Mosoni -Danube rivers. That is why the small
river Marcal has become the first to be affected by the spill.
The teams worked to reduce the alkalinity of the spill, which began to leak on
Monday from the reserve of an alumina plant and flooded local villages, leaving as
a result eight dead, more than 150 injured and three people still missing.
When the spill hit the Raba, Mosoni-Danube and Danube rivers, its alkaline content
remains close to pH 9, above the normal and safe level of between 6 and 8,
Dobson said.
Equipment for the neutralization of alkalinity. In Gyor, a city in northwestern
Hungary where the waters of the Raba flow into the Mosoni-Danube, a journalist
saw white foam in the river and many small dead fish on the shore.
Gabor Figeczky, director of the Hungarian branch of the WWF environmental group
that visited the area with experts, said the impact on the Marcal River was worse
than expected and he expected the alkalinity to fall when it reached the Raba, a
larger river.
For this reason, the spill continued with a pH between 9 and 10.
"According to our current estimates, (pollution) will remain limited to Hungary and
we are also confident that it will reach Budapest with acceptable pH values," he
added.
Downstream from the disaster area, the Danube passes through Croatian, Serbian,
Bulgarian, Romanian, Moldovan and Ukrainian territory on its way to the Black
Sea.
Hungary declared a state of emergency in three counties on Tuesday, after the red
mud - made up of bauxite refining waste that has a strong caustic effect - affected
Kolontar, Devecser and other towns 160 km west of Budapest.
 The Degraded Danube

Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban called the spill the country's biggest
ecological disaster. But other government officials say there has been no serious
impact on the Danube's wildlife because the sludge's toxic substances have been
safely diluted by the river—a claim that Greenpeace and other environmental
groups have been quick to question.

"To say it's not creating any environmental impact at all would be misleading, but
whether those impacts are devastating, it doesn't appear that they are," said Jim
Kuipers, a mining-engineering consultant based in Butte, Montana.

The Hungary spill is the latest in a long list of environmental problems affecting the
Danube River, including pollution from cities and industry and pesticides and
chemical runoff from farms.

"It's sort of like having a bad backache and then having your kid jumping on you,"
said Emily Stanley, a freshwater scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
"It's an acute injury to a chronically stressed system."

One of the biggest threats facing the Danube today is human alterations to the
river made for navigation purposes, according to a 2004 European Commission
report. Projects to deepen, dam, or straighten the river and remove "bottlenecks" to
vessel passage are changing the river's traditional floodplain landscape and water
flow into deltas, as well as destroying wetlands and other protected habitats,
according to the environmental nonprofit WWF.

There are currently projects underway to restore the Danube's floodplains, and a
recent plan by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River
(ICPDR) aims to halt the illegal dumping of hazardous materials into the river.
 Making Mining Safer?

The total discharge from the dam failure in Hungary is nearly equal to the 200
million gallons (750 million liters) of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from the
leaking BP oil well this year. But comparing the two disasters is neither fair nor
accurate, Kuipers said.

"The immediate devastation of this dam failure is in a relatively small area, and we
haven't seen huge widespread ecological impacts from it," he said.

"But in the Gulf, the widespread impacts are pretty much indisputable, and it's
going to cost tens of billions of dollars to clean up. It's not going to cost tens of
billions of dollars to deal with the ecological impact of this spill."

But even if the environmental costs from the tailing-dam spill are still unclear, the
toll in human life is already too high, Kuipers said.

"If only one person is killed, it's one person too many," he added. "It points to very
lax [dam-building] standards in the country as a whole."

Hungary is not unique in this regard, however, said the University of Wisconsin’s
Stanley.
“In Eastern Europe in particular, there are a lot of these dams and facilities that are
not receiving any kind of oversight anymore," she said. "The money is short and
the government has just walked away."

Some experts estimate that the rate of tailing-dam failures worldwide is nearly ten
times higher than that of typical water dams—and with many of those dams located
near rivers and streams, the potential for environmental damage to waterways is
high.

For example, if the Akjai aluminum plant tailings contained cyanide instead of less
toxic arsenic and mercury, the impact on wildlife could have been much worse.

In 2000, just such a spill occurred in Romania when a tailing dam from a gold mine
burst, spilling cyanide-laced water into the Tisza and Danube rivers and killing up
to 80 percent of aquatic life along some stretches.

Scientists and environmental groups worry that as mining projects grow larger, the
tailing dams built to serve them will pose increasingly larger threats should they
fail.
For example, a tailing dam proposed for the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska,
would be among the largest dam of any kind in the world. If that dam were to
break, "the scale of what happened in Hungary will seem like child's play," said
Alan Septoff, research director of Earthworks, a nonprofit environmental group
based in Washington, D.C.
Another concern is the large number old tailing-dams that are aging without proper
maintenance or repair.
"Dams are like baby boomers," the University of Wisconsin's Stanley said. "They
get old, they age, and they begin to show signs of deterioration. Without inspection
and regular repairs and maintenance, I think it's highly likely that we'll see more of
these [failures] in the future."
Fortunately, the mining industry has demonstrated that it’s capable of change, she
said. The bad news is that it has sometimes required a catastrophe to do so. For
example, in 2008, a tailing dam rupture at the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant in
Tennessee released more than 1.1 billion gallons (6.8 billion gallons) of coal fly ash
flurry—a byproduct of coal combustion—into the Emory River.
"As a result, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others immediately
undertook an evaluation of all similar facilities in the United States," Kuipers said.
"In the same way, the [Hungary spill] is a call for similar facilities throughout the
world to undergo inspection and change their operational situation to prevent this
type of event from occurring."
Stanley is similarly hopeful. "Maybe this is a difficult thing for Hungary, but a wake-
up call or the rest of the world about managing these wastes," she said.