On January 30, 2000, a toxic chemical spill destroyed wildlife, devastated fish stocks and threatened the water supplies of nearly 2.5 million people in central Eastern Europe.

Romania’s Somes River, Hungary’s Tisza River and Yugoslavia’s Danube River, which is Europe’s largest waterway, were each catastrophically polluted. The toxic spill eventually reached the Black Sea and affected Romania, Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Serbia and Montenegro.

The spill began when the dam containing toxic waste material from the Baia Mare Aurul gold mine in North Western Romania burst and released roughly 3.5 million cubic feet (100,000 cubic metres) of waste water, heavily contaminated with cyanide, into the Lapus and Somes tributaries of the river Tisza, which is a tributary of the great Danube River.

Cyanide is extremely toxic and lethal to humans and animals, even in very small doses. It works by making the body unable to use life-sustaining oxygen. The cyanide-laced water continued to flow and soon reached the Danube, which flows through Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania.

At this point, the cyanide reached a deadly density of 800 times the accepted maximum safe level. The situation was going from bad to worse because Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania all get drinking water from the Danube. (As a point of reference, the American standard as regulated by the Environmenal Protection Agency allows 0.2 parts cyanide per 1 million parts water (0.2 ppm) in U.S. drinking water.)

Loyola de Palacio, the European Union Commissioner for Transport and Energy, called the cyanide spill “a catastrophe of European dimensions.”

Officials from Hungary called the spill Europe’s worst ecological disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant calamity in the Ukraine. Shortly after this disaster, Hungary’s Tisza River was officially declared a dead river.

In fact, Hungarian towns along the Tisza were forced to ban the use of water, fishing and the selling of fish. While this move seriously threatened the livelihoods of many fishermen, authorities appeared to have no other choice. For the townspeople who lived along the Tisza, large amounts of emergency water had to be brought in because of the deadly contamination.

At the time of the spill, Serbia’s Environment Minister Blazic was quoted as saying, “The Tisza has been killed. Not even bacteria have survived.” Although the chemical was gradually being diluted by the river water and was beginning to lose some of its lethal effect, over the next weekend hundreds of dead and dying fish were reported collecting at the junction of the Danube and Tisza. This is an area just 50 kilometres upstream from the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade.

The allowable maximum of cyanide per liter of water is 0.1 milligram. By this time, at the Hungarian town of Szeged, which borders Yugoslavia, the cyanide level was 1.1 milligrams per liter. Roughly 300 tons of dead and dying fish were removed from the river and disposed of.

However, Hungary estimates that the overall fish kill throughout Hungary was 1,240 tons. Other wildlife, including Mute Swans, Black Cormorant, horses, foxes and various other carnivores as well as other domesticated animals were also affected by this toxic spill.

Following the Baia Mare cyanide spill, various environmental assessments were carried out by several international organizations to determine the affect this spill had on the Tisza River and its tributaries.

According to these reports, acute effects were noted wherever the cyanide plume passed along the Tisza river system. Along with the dead fish, plankton and macrozoobenthos were also discovered.

The spill also drastically increased the existing heavy metal contamination of soil sediment, especially including copper, lead and zinc.

Despite the increased heavy metal pollution, it does appear that the Tisza River Basin’s ecosystem is trying to regenerate itself, and much of the wildlife is also recovering along the Tisza and its tributaries.

According to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), more dedicated action is necessary in addressing the environmental “insecurities” and threats to the region, which includes Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro.

The report also points specifically at the mining industry. In the wake of the Baia Mare cyanide spill, the mines, both active and inactive, are still considered sources of potential accidental pollution. They are singled out by the new UNEP report for special and close monitoring and attention.

Despite a recovering ecosystem, some of the pollution and heavy metal contamination along the Tisza River still remain and more needs to be done to clean up the water as much as possible.

International experts indicated that the main cause of the Baia Mare cyanide spill is a combination of design defects in the facilities, unexpected operating conditions and bad weather. Whatever the cause, this toxic spill certainly exacerbated the serious pollution problems this region has been facing for years.

At the junction of the Mantaro and Yauli rivers in Peru, over 12,000 feet up in the Andes, is a small city of about 35,000 people. It is a community built on the mineral wealth of the mountains and exists only to serve the mines and the smelting company that processes the ore. In 1922 the Cerro de Pasco Corporation, A US-owned company with operations in South America, built a smelting plant in La Oroya, Peru. It was part of the expansion of North American and European corporate expansion into the resource-rich continent. A town grew up around the industrial complex.

The plant has changed hands many times over the years, including being owned by the Peruvian government from 1974 until 1997, when it was privatized and purchased by the Doe Run company of Missouri.

The plant gives off a list of toxins that includes high levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium, and zinc. A 1999 study of school children in La Oroya found that 99 percent of them were suffering from lead poisoning and 20 percent were so contaminated that they should have been hospitalized. They couldn’t be hospitalized because the facilities do not exist to treat such a large portion of the population, unfortunately.

Doe Run has taken some measures, though they are largely insufficient and seem more related to public relations than improving the lives of residents. Children under six years of age and having more than 45 micrograms of lead per decilitre of blood are bused to Casaracra, a 30 minute bus ride away, for eight hours a day. The World Health Organisation limit for lead is 10 micrograms per decilitre of blood, so to qualify the children have be 4.5 times the acceptable limit. Being removed from the environment for eight hours a day may reduce exposure somewhat, but the children still spend two thirds of their lives surrounded by emissions known to be toxic. The program also applies only to those six and under, leaving school-aged children exposed to the toxins 24 hours a day.

“Exposure to lead is more dangerous for young and unborn children. Unborn children can be exposed to lead through their mothers. Harmful effects include premature births, smaller babies, decreased mental ability in the infant, learning difficulties, and reduced growth in young children. These effects are more common if the mother or baby was exposed to high Center for Disease Control

Other pollutants, most notably cadmium, arsenic and sulphur dioxide, are also well above the acceptable limits set by the WHO. Children are not only more susceptible to the effects of exposure, but more likely to be exposed because they play in the dust and tend to put contaminated objects, such as toys, in their mouths.

As part of the privatization process, Doe Run was supposed to reduce toxic emissions and clean up the facility. In May 2006 Doe Run received its fourth extension to reduce toxic emissions and now has until 2009 to meet its targets. Given the lackadaisical attitude the company has exhibited so far, it is unlikely that it will do so without some sort of outside intervention.

Photo credit: Matthew Sully

The 2006 extension came in the wake of a civil court suit in which the Peruvian government was found at fault for failing to comply with the National General Health Law, the National Air and Environmental Quality Standards, and a Supreme Decree regarding declaring States of Emergency in cases of contamination.

Carlos Chirinos, the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA) attorney who handled the case said, “This decision confirms the urgent need to implement measures to protect the health and lives of the people in La Oroya that are affected by the smelter. We will closely monitor compliance with the court order, to ensure improvements in the quality of life and health for the populace, and the economic benefits that this will bring to the region.”

The Peruvian government has little power in their relationship with large companies. Not only does the government desperately need the revenue such companies provide, but the development and jobs are all that stand between many of the citizens and destitution. La Oroya is a perfect example of this kind of catch-22.

The land surrounding the complex is incapable of supporting crops. It is high in the mountains, where few crops can survive. It was marginal before the toxins released by the plant were a factor and is now incapable of supporting any sort of crop. The jobs that aren’t directly related to mining and smelting are spin-offs of those industries. Without the Doe Run plant, there would be no stores, schools, daycare, or medical facilities.

Photo credit: Matthew Burpee

La Oroya supports about 35,000 people locally but it also supports many more in various other parts of Peru. Office workers, executives, hotel and restaurant workers and a variety of others across the country depend on the mining and smelting industry for their incomes. To close down a major facility would be a severe economic blow and is not a viable option. So when Doe Run asks for an extension from the Peruvian government, it gets an extension.

Doe Run has also arguably made things better than when the plant was run by the Peruvian government. Lead emissions have been reduced by 35%, sulphur dioxide emissions by 5%, and waste water treatment has been improved. There have been attempts to recover land formerly contaminated by slag heaps.

Photo credit: Matthew Burpee

Emissions are still well above limits set by the WHO and the Peruvian government though. If Doe Run’s La Oroya operation were subject to the same laws they have to comply with in the United States, they would be forced not only to drastically reduce their emissions, but to clean up the surrounding area to a much larger degree than they already have.

Given the greatly reduced costs of operating in countries such as Peru, with their reduced wage and operating costs, there is little excuse for the continued contamination of La Oroya and its citizens. The kind of procrastination and evasion practised by companies like Doe Run in the developing world would never be tolerated in the developed world. Doe Run was forced to clean up its Herculaneum, Missouri operation. Why not La Oroya?

An industrial city founded in 1935 as a slave labor camp, the Siberian city of Norilsk, Russia is the northernmost major city in Russia. After Murmansk, it’s the largest city above the Arctic Circle. It’s also the most polluted.

Right now, in June and July, the sun stays up all day, but the furnaces in the Nadezhda Metallurgical plant run round the clock all year long, smelting nickel and other ores and spouting a steady fountain of toxic, sulfurous smoke. Two million tons of sulfur dioxide per year since the 1950s. That they reported.

As a result, the Norilsk region is the home of the world’s largest pollution induced forest decline. For forty kilometers around the smelters, the soil contains 10-1000 times the normal background level of heavy metals.

As a result, the snow is yellow and black.

As a result, move to Norilsk to work, and your life expectancy will drop by ten years.

“Norilsk is the world’s biggest nickel and palladium producer, having overtaken Inco several years back. Since data first emerged from the ex-Soviet Union in the early nineties, it has established itself as one of the world’s single biggest ambient air polluters – if not the biggest. Indeed, despite early technological assistance from outside Russia (notably from Finland’s Outokumpu Oy), its contribution to the country’s sulphur dioxide burden has increased in relative terms.” Mines & Communities

“[Norilsk] is a city where the bus driver tells you, ‘If a Norilsk man gets sick in Moscow, the way to cure him is to move him closer to the car’s exhaust.’” Howard Weaver

“In my estimation, about 400,000 people took part in the construction of this complex. Due to the cold and the bullets, about one-fifth of them died,” Anatoly Lvov says. “At the same time, tens of thousands of volunteers worked shoulder to shoulder with the prisoners, and they object to those who say Norilsk was built on people’s bones. The prisoners who survived also are proud to have built this.” Howard Weaver

"In 1997, with the old combine in disarray, one of Russia’s richest men, Vladimir O. Potanin, bought its mines and factories and began a modernization that has cut the work force nearly in half, to 60,000, and jettisoned many of its obligations to support the city’s basic services." New York Times

“Officials say the environmental depths of Norilsk pollution was reached in 1984, but the plants even by official admission still emit many times the allowable norms and acid rain is killing hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and tundra nearby. Water pollution also is severe, with officials admitting to more than 100 polluted kilometers of river.” Howard Weaver

“The Norilsk Mining Companies… produce one seventh of all the factory pollution in Russia. Each year they churn out over two million tonnes in waste gas, and 85 million cubic meters of dirty water, according to the few figures provided by the Russian government. Its impact, ecologists say, is felt in Norway and Canada, and is killing off the forest tundra for hundreds of miles. Locals say the snow is yellow for 30 miles around the town.” Mines and Communities

“They took everything from me,” said Olga I. Yaskina, who was sent to the
Gulag in Norilsk in 1952 when she was just 16 for writing a letter to a friend in exile that said: “Don’t cry. The sun will rise for us again.”

She never left after she was released from the prison camp three years later. Now 67, she receives a pension and works as a concierge at an apartment building, supporting herself and an unemployed son on little more than $300 a month.

She stays not because she wants to but because she has no better alternative. “I have nothing left on the continent,” she said.

New York Times

"The [charitable donations] represent a “goodwill gesture” to the people of Montana from the Russian company that bought controlling interest in Stillwater Mining Co. in 2003. The donation marks ZooMontana’s largest corporate donation to date. Frank McAllister, CEO at Stillwater, said the idea was born when the company was in the midst of transactions with Norilsk two years ago.

“We were concerned about our image and needed to explain to the community exactly who Norilsk is,” he said.
Billings Gazette

Thanks to Dave Greten

"Standard Oil formed the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company. Not long after, the company changed its name to Anaconda Mining Company. The company engaged in questionable business practices, and at one point they even resorted to gunning down strikers in the Anaconda Road Massacre…[In the] 1950s, the Anaconda company switched its focus from the costly and dangerous practice of underground mining to open pit and strip mining. This marked the beginning of the end for the boom times in Butte." wikipedia

"Thousands of homes were destroyed to build the Berkeley Pit, which opened in 1955. At the time, it was the largest truck-operated open pit copper mine in the United States. Other strip mines were built in the area, a few of which are still operational. In 1982… the water pumps at the bottom of the pit were shut down, which resulted in heavily acidic water [pH 2.5] filling up the pit." wikipedia

"The Pit received national attention as a poster child of environmental damage when a flock of migrating snow geese chose to land and rest on the Pit’s toxic waters in November of 1995. They drank the highly acidic water and close to 350 died." ButteAmerica

"The water in the underground mines and Berkeley Pit is highly acidic and high in concentrations of arsenic, copper, cadmium, cobalt, iron, manganese, zinc, and sulfate, plus other inorganic constituents." MBMG

"As of April 6, 2005, the Pit’s water level was 5,251.43 feet above sea level. The water level climbed about 3.65 feet since the last issue of PitWatch in Fall 2004. Since June 1996, when PitWatch was first published, the water has risen about 123.15 feet." PitWatch

The EPA built a facility on the south shore of the pit to both remove the copper and add lime to the water, making a sludge that can then be dumped back into the pit. This U.S. $18 million facility is removing metals from 2 million gallons of water per day flowing from Horseshoe Bend.

Copper is recovered from the water and smelted elsewhere. The operation of this extraction facility requires ten tons of lime per day and generates a sludge contaminated with iron that is dumped back into the pit water. The copper in the water is swapped for iron in the water. In other words, the EPA cleanup is making the pit more toxic. It’s a "terminal sink."

Eventually, the water level will rise to the so-called critical level of 5,410 feet above sea level. One source forecast that this would happen in 2021, a more recent one claimed it would happen in 2018.

The water level has 158 more feet to rise before it reaches the critical level. Since the Pitwatch organization started keeping track in 1996, the water has risen about 123 feet.

The Inco mine at Sudbury, Ontario – digging into a layer of sulfuriferous rock to reach the remains of an ancient metallic bolide rich with copper and nickel. This image clearly shows what is the largest smokestack in North America, and the second tallest on earth.

It spews out sulfur dioxide produced by Inco’s Copper Cliff smelting operation — and is probably the single largest point-source for acid rain-causing emissions on the entire continent.

"Toronto-based Inco, the world’s second-biggest nickel producer, got its start in Sudbury in 1902 and today runs a vast mining, smelting, milling and refining complex in the region that employs some 4,500 people." The Globe and Mail

"When nickel-copper ore is smelted, this sulfur is released into the environment. The sulfur is toxic to vegetation. Carried aloft, it combines with atmospheric water to form sulfuric acid. This contaminates atmospheric water, resulting in a phenomenon known as acid rain. Acid rain erodes rocks and masonry, kills plants, and acidifies soil, discouraging regeneration of vegetation. In the Sudbury area, vegetation was decimated, both by acid rain and by logging to provide fuel for early smelting techniques. The erosion exposed bedrock, which was charred in most places to a pitted, dark black appearance." source

In the 1950s and 60s, Inco and Falconbridge employees had to fight their companies for the right to unionize.

"Labour issues would continue to be Sudbury’s dominant economic challenge. In 1979, Inco workers embarked on a strike over production and employment cutbacks, which lasted for nine full months. As Inco was by this time Sudbury’s largest employer, the strike decimated Sudbury’s economy." source

Inco is currently embarked on a campaign to break the hardrock mining union, the Subury local being one of Canada’s strongest.

The high concentration of metals found in the Sudbury Basin are believed to be the remnants of a 1,850 year old meteorite impact crater. When this meteorite smashed into Canada’s Precambrian Shield, transition metals like platinum were formed in the resulting extreme heat and pressure.

Somehow, an unusually high concentration of sulfur wound up in the mix as well. Smells rotten.

During the Apollo program, NASA astronauts trained in Sudbury to locate the shatter cones formed during the impact. There weren’t there because Sudbury strangely resembled the lifeless wastelands of the moon.

The moon doesn’t smell like anything.

You can still see the sulfur pond and tailings from an unbelievable height. What is harder to see in this image is how breast cancer rates are much higher for the populations downwind of Sudbury than for the regions to the west. No one is sure why.

Water looks beautiful from space, especially in Canada. That’s the Georgian Bay to the south and large Lake Nipissing to the east. The smaller, dark body of water directly northeast of Sudbury is Wanapitei Lake.

Thanks to Nat Vaprin.

Sprol Revisit: Sudbury previously appeared in Like a Neon Sign.

The company operating here has been repeatedly cited for violating environmental regulations. The tailings pool itself is an acidic mix of nickel, nickel arsenide, copper, chromium, zinc, lead, aluminum, phosphorous, iron, and who knows what else. Dumped into the ground. Notice the lack of land-based vegetation in the area? According to one resident, the township had to dump lime on the soil — with helicopters — in order to get trees to grow there.

The toxic chemicals involved in the refining of nickel cause deadly cancer in people. It’s also incredibly dangerous work. Although this site is in Canada, the mining industry in the United States is the most perilous industry one can toil in. More dangerous than fishing. More dangerous than building skyscrapers.

But Inco, the owners of the vast Sudbury complex shown here, have at least one hundred reasons to celebrate. Plus, the world continues to need nickel, for a gazillion different uses, I’m positive. But one wonders if there might be a way to extract the metal that doesn’t turn the region into a wasteland and poison all the residents.