Hungary Fisherman Say Cyanide Poisoned Their Lives

By Daniel Langenkamp

SZEGED, Hungary (Reuters) - Hungarian fishermen trawling the Tisza River Friday for fish killed by cyanide from a gold smelter upstream in Romania said the accident had poisoned their lives.

``There've been fishermen in my family for four generations, my wife has been crying for three days,'' said a distraught Istvan Nagy, 57.

``A guy my age can't do anything else -- I'm too old,'' Nagy added as he hauled dead fish from the river, which fishermen near this southern Hungarian city blocked with a line of seven barges to trap carcasses.

Nagy, who usually fishes the Tisza for carp, pike perch and other prized species from one of Hungary's most scenic rivers, said the Australian-Romanian management of the gold smelter in northwestern Romania should pay for the damage.

The Aurul SA plant in Baia Mare, Romania, on a tributary of the Tisza, is half owned by Australia's Esmeralda Exploration Ltd. The company has acknowledged an accident occurred but has said reports of damage are greatly exaggerated.

Nagy was not at all moved by their arguments.

``I don't want to say that we should slit their throats but they have to pay,'' he said. ``They have ruined our lives.''

Hungarian environmental officials have said it is too soon to assess the full extent of the damage from the spill, which has swept downstream since a retaining dam at the Aurul plant overflowed on the night of January 30.

But some officials say up to 90 percent of all fish, plankton and other organisms in the Tisza have been killed.

Major Effect On Food Chain

``The whole food chain has been killed,'' said Imre Gyorgy Torok, deputy director of the Lower Tisza Water District Authority.

``It will take years at best until life will return,'' he said, noting that efforts to restock the Tisza might fail because the young fish will have little to feed on.

Some environmentalists compare the accident to the spill of deadly chemicals in the Rhine river by the Sandoz plant in Basle, Switzerland, in 1986 which wiped out almost all animal life along a 500-km (300 mile) stretch of the river.

``The river finally did recover but it took years,'' said Peter Literathy, director of Budapest's Zituki Institute for Water Pollution Control.

At noon, cyanide concentrations in the Tisza River near Szeged, 700 km (400 miles) downstream of the Aurul plant, were 2.7 mg per liter.

Torok said the level was 130 times the legal limit for cyanide discharges into water and far above the level needed to kill fish and other wildlife.

The 50-60 km (30-40 mile) long wave of poison-laced river water was expected to move from Hungary downstream into Serbia Friday evening, officials said.

Hungarian citizens have been spared direct exposure to the cyanide because water intake valves of municipal water systems, many of which draw water from the Tisza, were shut as the poisonous wave flowed past.

But the spill has left a bitter taste in the mouths of residents who love the meandering, scenic river, which had been experiencing an upswing of tourism in recent years.

The fishermen hauling the dead catfish and perch from the river threw most into plastic garbage bags, but lined up a few prized specimens, some as big as 20 kilos (44 pounds), on the bank for display.

``Look at these wonderful fish,'' said one local resident who had come like many like hundreds to see the spectacle. ``It's so horrible.''

-- I thought y2k was over? (@ .), February 12, 2000

Answers

The media isn't covering it because it's "local" -- which means it didn't happen in Washington DC or within spitting distance of the TV network news headquarters in New York City.

-- Ed Yourdon (ed@yourdon.com), February 12, 2000.

This environmental disaster has been described as the "worst since Chernobyl".

Why is there no media coverage of this???

-- ? (?@?.?), February 12, 2000.

Because its LOCAL?! We get magnifying glass coverage of every bus plunge, mudslide and heavy rain that happens around the world. It doesn't involve human life therefore its inconsequential, NOT because its local news. EARTH FIRST, we'll rape the rest of the galaxy later.

-- Guy Daley (guydaley@bwn.net), February 12, 2000.

"The media isn't covering it because it's "local" -- which means it didn't happen in Washington DC or within spitting distance of the TV network news headquarters in New York City." Ed Yourdon

Well, I still (optimist that I am) would bet that if this happen in England, France or Germany, we would have heard about it -- to some degree. However, the principle behind the thought is valid.

-- Jackson Brown (Jackson_Brown@deja.com), February 12, 2000.

I dunno, folks. When people I've referred to the Forum have taken their "maiden tour" their first response is on the order of "why hasn't there been more media coverage of...?" topics covered here that are of national interest. Maybe it's like older kids wanting to be scared by horror films. They want to be scared, but they want to be sure it's not real. What's happening would be too much like asking Michael Meyers home for the week-end (cf _Halloween_)if he weren't safely on disc or in a video casette and could be turned off at will.

-- mike in houston (mmorris67@hotmail.com), February 12, 2000.

Re: Media Coverage

It is surreal. We have a portal to the world via the Internet. Reuters, AP, CNN.com, and other wire services ARE reporting it on the internet but network TV including CNN are not reporting it for the masses.

It appears "they" are not blocking the Y2K news (otherwise Reuters and others would be shutdown; even the Internet could be shutdown but then everyone would notice). Rather they are letting the news out to those that are willing to dig for it themselves on the internet.

So it appears "they" are not afraid of a small group "knowing" whatis really happening as long as the masses don't all move in one direction at once.

BTW, did you see the Honeywell spokeperson's reference to embedded failure in the oil industry on Downstreamer's forum?

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), February 12, 2000.

Related link from Yahoo

Fair use for Educational and Research Purposes

Sunday, February 13 1:19 AM SGT

Cyanide spill is ecological crisis: Hungarian official BUDAPEST, Feb 12 (AFP) - Thousands of tonnes of cyanide-laced water which poured into rivers in Hungary and Yugoslavia, stripping them of all life, have caused the region's worst ecological crisis since the Chernobyl reactor melt- down, officials said.

Some 100,000 cubic metres (3.5 million cubic feet) of water polluted with cyanide escaped from a Romanian gold mine two weeks ago and swept into rivers on the Hungarian side of the border.

Although the concentration of cyanide in the rivers is not thought to be deadly to human beings, Zoltna Illes, president of the Hungarian parliament's environment committee, said hundreds of tonnes of fish and other river creatures had been killed.

"It is as if a neutron bomb had been detonated. All the living organisms have been destroyed. It is the worst ecological disaster in central Europe since Chernobyl in 1986," he told AFP.

Romanian officials and the Australian owners of the mine, in Sasar in northern Romania, have played down the significance of the spill of cyanide, which is used to clean extracted gold.

Brett Montgomery, chairman of Perth-based Australia Esmeralda Exploration, described reports of environmental catastrophe a "gross exaggeration."

"Someone who can call a five-kilometre long stretch of dead fish a gross exaggeration is either genuinely badly informed, or deliberately ignoring the facts," retorted Gabor Horvath, a spokesman for Hungary's foreign ministry.

Hungary has demanded compensation for the spill, which the Romanian government has said the mine's owners would have to pay. A joint commission of Hunagrian and Romanian experts will assess the damage, it was announced Friday.

The cyanide has contaminated the rivers Szamos and Tisza (Tisa in Yugoslavia) and has arrived in Yugoslavia, where it continues to kill fish, according to the Serbian agriculture ministry, which prohibited the population from using the water.

The ministry said that at the border of Yugoslavia the water in the Tisa contined 0.13 milligrammes of cyanide per litre at dawn on Saturday but the level had fallen to 0.07 milligrammes two hours later.

Professor Bozo Dalmacija of the University of Novi Sad told AFP that a fatal dose for a human being would by 4.5 milligrammes of cyanide. The safety threshold is considered to be 0.1 milligrammes he said.

The Serbian hydrometeorological ministry said it estimated the pollution will reach the Danube early Sunday.

-- Bill P (porterwn@one.net), February 12, 2000.

This is a very sad story.

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 12, 2000.

What strange timeing... CNN Headline News is now "covering" the story..... Naaa :-)

-- Casper (c@no.yr), February 13, 2000.

Fox News had a piece on it earlier today. Saw it at least twice. Don't recall them comparing it to Chernobyl, though. I know I saw it, I remember them dead fish.

-- canthappen (n@ysayer.com), February 13, 2000.

[snip]

Brett Montgomery, chairman of Perth-based Australia Esmeralda Exploration, described reports of environmental catastrophe a "gross exaggeration."

[end snip]

Send the dead fish to him. Then let's see him talk about gross....!

-- Postman (ringstwice@lw.ays), February 13, 2000.

There was a very small item about this in the San Francisco Chronicle in the "Earth Watch" section.

-- Amy (canaryclub@aol.com), February 13, 2000.

Hi All. Just so you know, it made the front page of the Seattle Times. Picture of dead fish and a couple of guys with a net. Full story page A2, Sunday, Feb. 13.

-- Ken Mitcham (ken_mitcham@yahoo.com), February 13, 2000.