I'm thinking End Times, aren't you?
Yeah, global warming is the problem, not industrial pollution.
PRAGUE — The Hungarian government declared a state of emergency in several towns yesterday, a day after a reservoir at an alumina production plant in Ajka burst its banks, unleashing a flood of toxic red sludge that killed at least four people and injured more than 120, government officials said.
The flood, estimated at 185 million gallons, swept cars off roads, damaged bridges and houses, and forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents. People who came in contact with the substance were burned through their clothes.
“People here speak of a mini-tsunami,’’ said Gyorgy Bakos, spokesman for the National Directorate General for Disaster Management, who was close to the scene of the accident.
Hungarian environmental advocates said that the spill could have devastating environmental consequences and that it threatened to pollute the Danube River, causing long-term damage to ecosystems and killing fish and vegetation. The agricultural soil that is now under the sludge will have to be replaced at a potentially high cost, they said.
Authorities and emergency services evacuated residents from Kolontar, Devecser, and Somlovasarhely, in southwestern Hungary, and set up makeshift camps in schools and community centers.
In addition to the dead, who appeared to have drowned, five people were missing, and 7,000 residents were affected by the spill....
What a horrifying death.
Zoltan Illes, state secretary at the Environment Ministry, who was also in Devecser, called the spill an “environmental disaster.’’
Like the Gulf Gusher and the coal ash floods!
***************
Residents in Kolontar, not far from where the accident occurred, tried to rush from their homes as a wave of sludge 6 feet high pushed its way through homes and narrow streets.
I am drowning in it.
Gabor Figeczky, deputy country officer of WWF-Hungary, an environmental group, said the main threat from sludge was that it is very alkaline, with a pH as high as 13, making it a caustic detergent that could burn.
Figeczky said the environmental risk was created by the highly alkaline substance flowing into rivers and killing all life there. He said it remained unclear whether rainfall and upstream water could help dilute the caustic mud in the river and avert more damage to the larger rivers downstream.
“There hasn’t been such a spill of this red sludge before anywhere,’’ he said.
The Hungarian Environment Ministry immediately ordered the owner of the Ajka alumina plant, MAL Zrt, the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Co., to suspend all operations.
Viktor Orban, the prime minister, appealed for calm. “There are grounds for panic, and this is understandable,’’ he told reporters.
He added that the government had set up a team of experts to analyze the accident, which he said might have been caused by human error and showed no signs of having been the result of natural causes. He stressed that there was no threat of radiation in the area affected by sludge.
Please remember that as you read further along.
Red sludge, also known as red mud, is a byproduct of the refining of bauxite into alumina, the basic material for manufacturing aluminum, according to the Aluminum Association, an industry trade group based in Arlington, Va. The sludge, a waste product in production, contains heavy metals and is toxic if ingested, scientists say.
The plant’s owner issued a statement yesterday afternoon saying that “the red sludge waste is not considered hazardous waste,’’ according to European Union standards.
Oh, so that makes everything fine, huh?
--more--"
KOLONTAR, Hungary — Hungary opened a criminal probe into the toxic sludge flood yesterday, and the European Union urged emergency authorities to do everything they can to keep the contaminated slurry from reaching the Danube and affecting half a dozen other nations....
It was still not known yesterday why part of the reservoir failed. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said authorities were caught off guard by the disaster since the plant and reservoir had been inspected only two weeks earlier and no irregularities had been found.
Governments suck!
So how many former industry hands head your regulatory inspections?
National Police Chief Jozsef Hatala decided to take over the probe because of its importance and complexity, police spokeswoman Monika Benyi said, adding that a criminal case had been opened by the country’s top investigative body into possible on-the-job carelessness....
Translation: the cover-up has begun!
The European Union said it feared the toxic flood could turn into an ecological disaster for several nations and urged Hungarian authorities to focus all efforts on keeping the sludge from the Danube....
Greenpeace was even more emphatic. The sludge spill is “one of the top three environmental disasters in Europe in the last 20 or 30 years,’’ said Herwit Schuster, a spokesman for Greenpeace.
Greenpeace workers took sludge samples and were having them tested in labs in Vienna and Budapest to find out how contaminated the sludge was by heavy metals.
“It is clear that [15.5 square miles] of mostly agricultural land is polluted and destroyed for a long time,’’ Schuster said. “If there are substances like arsenic and mercury, that would affect river systems and ground water on a long-term basis.’’
Red sludge is a byproduct of the refining of bauxite into alumina, the basic material for manufacturing aluminum. It contains heavy metals and is toxic if ingested. Treated sludge is often stored in ponds where the water eventually evaporates, leaving behind a dried red clay-like soil.
The Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company that owns the Ajkai plant, has insisted the red sludge is not considered hazardous waste according to EU standards.
Methinks they doth protest too much!
--more--"
BUDAPEST — The storage pond filled with caustic alumina-processing waste that burst and inundated several Hungarian villages this week was on a 2006 watch list of more than 150 industrial sites that were at risk for accidents that could contaminate the Danube River, according to an environmental group....
Even as the Hungarian government was concluding yesterday that effects of the spill on the Danube would probably not be as serious or widespread as initially feared, environmental specialists said it was a reminder of the Danube’s vulnerability to industrial mishaps and mistakes....
Governments are something, aren't they? All a bunch of f***ing murderous liars!
And the corporate media! Yup, ALL A MISTAKE and a "mishap!"
It is a F***ING ENVIRONMENTAL WAR CRIME!
Anna Nagy, a spokeswoman for the Hungarian government, said as the remnants of the sludge spill approached Budapest last night, the pH in the water was 8.1, within normal range and safe for fish and plants....
Yeah, GOVERNMENT SAID, huh?
OUR GOVERNMENT said the OIL is GONE from the GULF -- when there is a TWO-INCH LAYER COVERING the BOTTOM of the PLACE and MORE FLOATING ASHORE all the time!
Yeah, I really trust government and its lying, agenda-pushing papers!
The wave of dangerous red sludge that bored through the area around the city of Ajka Monday, killing at least four people and sending more than 100 to the hospital with chemical burns, was still being diluted yesterday by a combination of natural forces and cleanup efforts.
Yeah, it is ALL SAFE NOW!
Related: Slow Saturday Special: FDA's Gulf Coast Feast
Would you like to join me for lunch?
As the industrial waste, known as red mud, was carried to larger rivers, its effects were diminished, although all life died immediately in the streams and river near the spill.
But it's all okay now, blah, blah, blah, blah!!!!!!!!!!!!
There, Hungarian scientists had sought to neutralize the effect of the caustic alkaline substance by adding acidic material....
When the leading edge of the spill reached the main Danube around noon yesterday, it was still highly alkaline, with a pH of 9.8, far higher than is normal in the river, the conservation group WWF-Hungary said.
Once again, government low-balled it!
It was apparently further neutralized as the remnants of the sludge mixed with the waters of the Danube.
“I would still expect the effects to remain within Hungary,’’ said Gabor Figeczky, the group’s acting chief executive officer.
Then why is the E.U. all bent out of shape?
The exact content of the sludge from the burst reservoir is still unclear. Red mud, produced when bauxite is converted to alumina, can sometimes contain potentially dangerous levels of heavy metals and even low-level radiation....
And yet the FIRST THING out of the Prime Minister's lying mouth was NO RADIATION!
Yeah, can't have people panicking -- or suing corporations and governments!!!!!!!!!
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences said yesterday that its experts had studied samples from the area and concluded that the sludge did not contain harmful levels of radiation for humans, and that the “proportion of heavy metal particles in the red mud does not reach the health-threatening threshold limit,’’ according to the Hungarian news agency MTI.
That is what GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS said. huh?
You WANT that GOVERNMENT RESEARCH GRANT, right?
Still, the long-term effects of the spill on the affected villages, like Kolontar, near Ajka, are devastating.
How can that be when it like, almost all gone and back to normal?
Although the breach in the reservoir is repaired, the red muck still covers 1,977 acres. The area, an agricultural region, will need a complete soil change in part to remove the pollutant and in part because the alkaline sludge kills off all the organisms in soil that keep it healthy, said Gergely Simon, a chemist with the group Clean Air Action, an environmental group.
Another problem is that rain has given way to dry, warmer weather in the region over the past two days, meaning the caustic mud is increasingly turning to airborne dust, which can cause respiratory problems.
But don't worry; the victims will never be able to trace that to this in a court of "law."
“They need to move faster to remove the sludge,’’ Simon said.
Governments only seem to move fast when banks tell them to.
--more--"
And it's okay because everything is back to normal:
KOLONTAR, Hungary — The concentration of toxic heavy metals where Hungary’s massive red sludge spill entered the Danube has dropped to the level allowed in drinking water, authorities said yesterday, easing fears that Europe’s second-longest river would be significantly polluted.
You going to believe lying government and its mouthpiece media?
Monday’s reservoir break at an alumina plant dumped up to 184 million gallons of sludge onto three villages, government officials said, not much less in a few hours than the amount the blown-out BP oil well gushed into the Gulf of Mexico over several months.
They lied about that, too!
The red sludge devastated creeks and rivers near the spill site and entered the Danube on Thursday, moving downstream toward Croatia, Serbia, and Romania. Monitors were taking samples every few hours yesterday to measure damage from the spill, but the sheer volume of water in the Danube appeared to be blunting the red sludge’s immediate impact.
Test results released by Hungary’s disaster agency show the pH level of the water where the slurry entered the Danube was under 9 — well below the 13.5 measured earlier in local waterways near the site of the catastrophe. That is diluted enough to prevent any biological damage, Interior Minister Sandor Pinter said.
Days ago the government said it was just above 8. Sigh.
Despite the apparent good news, the risk of pervasive and lasting environmental damage remained at the site of the spill, with Greenpeace presenting laboratory tests that it said showed high concentrations of heavy metals in the sludge....
Sick of the spinning of turds yet?
Elsewhere, officials in Croatia said analysis of the Danube’s water at Batina, where the river enters Croatia from Hungary, showed “no difference from its usual quality.’’
Another lying government!
I just do not see how that can be.
****************
Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary said the threat to the Danube had been eliminated, and the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube, a Vienna-based group that monitors the river and its tributaries, agreed.
Because government said so.
“We managed to take control of the situation in time,’’ the state MTI news agency quoted Orban as saying.
“The consequences do not seem to be that dramatic,’’ said Philip Weller, head of the Danube commission.
In recent decades, the Danube has benefited from a massive cleanup effort involving all 10 countries that share the river. Marine life is again healthy, cormorants have returned to many stretches, and the Danube delta emptying into the Black Sea is one of Europe’s greatest homes for unique wildlife.
And then this crap was dumped into it.
--more--"
And get ready for the NEXT WAVE!
DEVECSER, Hungary — The cracking wall of an industrial plant reservoir appeared on the verge of collapse late yesterday, and engineers were working to blunt a possible second wave of the caustic red sludge that has already deluged several towns in western Hungary and killed seven.
Residents of one nearby town fled, others were ordered to be ready to evacuate, and everyone was bracing for a new onslaught of toxic material....
Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the northern wall of MAL Rt.’s storage pool, which released at least 184 million gallons of caustic red sludge and water five days ago after one of its corners ruptured, was showing numerous cracks and seemed ready to fail completely.
“There’s only one thing we can do — we have to behave as if this could happen any minute,’’ Orban told reporters in Budapest. “There’s no technical equipment that could really stop this process and the only thing we can do is prepare ourselves to stop the damage it would cause.’’
What a PoS Prime Minister that has lied to you from the start!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also see: Hungary Feeds Starving Bankers
And you wonder why the dam broke?
Engineers were building retaining walls around the previous breach and the weakened wall of the reservoir just outside Kolontar, the town hardest hit by the sludge flood. Kolontar’s nearly 800 residents were removed early yesterday.
Last Monday, the highly polluted water and mud flooded three villages in less than an hour, burning people and animals. At least seven people were killed and at least 120 were injured. Several of those who were hospitalized were in serious condition....
“We have no exact information about the nature of the material because a catastrophe like this has never happened before anywhere in the world,’’ Orban said yesterday in Ajka, where Kolontar residents were taken.
But the FIRST DAY he was ASSURING YOU there was NO RADIATION!
Red sludge is a byproduct of the refining of bauxite into alumina, the basic material for manufacturing aluminum. Treated sludge is often stored in ponds where the water eventually evaporates, leaving behind a largely safe red clay.
Industry analysts say the sludge in Hungary appears to have been insufficiently treated, if at all, meaning it remained highly caustic.
Most of what spilled last week was water, leaving behind slower-moving mud that has been kept in place by its own mass....
The reservoir, one of several at the Ajkai Timfoldgyar plant, is about 650 yards long and 500 yards at its widest point. It is formed by walls at least 50 yards high that look like flat-topped hills, tapering from roughly 65 yards thick at their base to 45 yards at their tops, which are covered in vegetation and trees....
So you WOULDN'T EVEN KNOW IT WAS THERE -- until now!!!
--more--"
Hungarian having any health problems 'round there BEFORE this accident waiting to happen?
