The consequences of the disaster on the longest river in Europe

On January 30, 2000, an ecological disaster occurred in the Romanian city of Baia Mare, because of which all life in the longest tributary of the Danube, the Tisza River, sank into oblivion, as if it had never existed. There weren't even any bacteria left in those waters. The fault of the incident was the factory of the Romanian-Australian gold mining company.

The fact is that a dam was erected by the plant, which blocked its poisonous sedimentation tanks, and one day it could not stand it. 100 thousand cubic meters of cyanide poured into the Tisza River. Of course, the Australian part of the company, which was supposed to be responsible for the modernization of protection, did not admit its guilt. She blamed bad weather, snow and rain for the waste spilling over the edge of the dam. And the fish, in their opinion, was dying because it was just freezing. However, in the first days after the disaster, more than a hundred tons of dead carcasses were fished out of the river.

Two weeks after the disaster, residents of coastal villages celebrated a memorial service for the Yew Tree. At this time, the poisoned water was already flowing in full force along the Danube. It was difficult to count the number of white sections of the river covered with belly-swimming fish.

Together with the poisoned fish, people collected the corpses of birds and animals in bags, and the water in the river in a matter of days became unsuitable even for technical needs, let alone for drinking. And so it was in Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia. The Danube carried thousands of cubic meters of cyanide and heavy metals into the Black Sea.

It was a shock, but environmentalists hoped that in five years everything would be restored and the water would be cleaned of chemicals.

22 years have passed, and the Danube remains the dirtiest river in Europe. All these years, pollution from industrial enterprises and housing complexes continued to flow into it. Perhaps if this disaster had been treated with a full understanding of the situation then, now the river would have had enough of its own resources to restore, but …

But for now, the history of the Danube is just a lesson to humanity.

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A source: Radio Sputnilk