Negotiating for Water Resources: Bridging Transboundary River Basins by Andrea Haefner

Author:Andrea Haefner [Haefner, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Geopolitics, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317213963
Google: fzMlDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 32512497
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

Map 4.4 Baia Mare incident location.

Source: Adjusted from BBC News, 2001.

In general, Aurul SA extracts non-ferrous metals from waste rock piles of mines in the Baia Mare area and uses the cyanide heap-leaching method (extracting gold with cyanide). Most of the mined materials end up in fine slurry, called tailing, which is then stored in tailing dams (storing the hazardous material).102 In general, the facilities including the tailing dam are closed-circuit systems which avoid discharging emissions into the river system; this was the basis for the EIA of the Aurul SA site. The company was processing and storing solid mining wastes from the extraction of residual gold and silver in a 30-year-old tailing dam when, on the night of 30 January 2000, a dam holding contaminated waters burst and 100,000 cubic metres of cyanide-contaminated water (containing an estimated 100 tonnes of cyanide) spilled over farmland and then into the Somes River.

The flooding washed away a 25-metre-wide and two-and-a-half-metre-deep section of the new tailing dam wall. After the spill, the Somes River had cyanide concentrations over 700 times of the permitted levels. Additionally, heavy metals were also washed into the river, resulting in long-lasting negative impacts on the environment.103 The pollutants – including cyanide and metal-rich liquid – flowed via different tributaries, first into the Tizsa River and finally through the Danube River into the Black Sea, causing the rapid death of aquatic organisms and animals living in and close to the rivers; around 2,000 kilometres of the Danube basin were affected. After the cyanide entered the Danube, the large volume of river water diluted it, but in some sections it still remained as high as 20 to 50 times above the allowed concentration.104

The transboundary pollution had severe negative impacts on biodiversity, the river’s ecosystem, drinking water supply and the socio-economic conditions of the local population. Wildlife was particularly affected on the Tisza River where on a stretch virtually all living things were killed, and further south, in the Serbian section, 80 per cent of the aquatic life was killed. Large quantities of fish died due to the toxicity of cyanide in the waters of the rivers, affecting 62 species of fish, of which 20 are protected species (also affecting other animals, such as foxes, otters and ospreys, which died after eating contaminated fish).

The drinking supplies of three countries – Hungary, former Yugoslavia and Romania – were poisoned.105 Similarly, long-term damage occurred in agricultural products due to the heavy metals in soil and water, affecting not only incomes, but, more importantly, human health due to the chronic effects of pollution.106 Two years after the spill the ecosystem began to recover, but it was still far from its initial state, as fishermen of Hungary claimed that their catches in 2002 were only one-fifth of their original levels. Biologists argue that it will take around five years to restock the fish and another 10–20 years for river life to return to normal, with some of the damage considered irreversible.107 Additionally, a flood in

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.