Lessons from the Dam

The toxic spill in Hungary on October 4th, 2010 was a catastrophe of devastating proportions. Even after its initial death toll of ten human lives and its destruction of many houses and crop fields, the environmental effects will continue to linger and hopefully serve as a reminder to the tremendous environmental gamble that is posed by tailing dams.

It has been more than a month after the aluminum holding pond in Kolontar, Hungary, spilled red mud with toxic material into the Danube River. A similar incident happened in Aznalcóllar, Spain, in 1998, and scientists attempting to assess the damage in Hungary are looking to a study from Aznalcóllar.

The study, published in the journal Nematropica, compared nematode populations from unpolluted and polluted areas. Nematodes, microscopic soil worms often used as biological indicators, had drastically reduced populations and some disappeared entirely for the first few months after the Aznalcóllar spill. The long-term implications are dire, since this means that the soil micro fauna had been badly damaged and may take decades to recover.

Hungary may be in worse shape because unlike the Kolontar incident, the Spanish spill formed a mud crust that kept most of the pollutants on its surface, helping with its clean-up. During the Hungary spill, the temperatures weren't hot enough to form this crust, and some scientists think that the worst contaminants might have fully seeped into the soil, leading to a total destruction of soil micro-fauna. In addition, Hungary's soil isn't the only thing at stake; the Danube has the most multinational river basin in the world, flowing through 18 countries* that use its water for drinking, industry, agriculture, transportation, power generation, and tourism.

What led to this disaster? Many Hungarians blame the company, Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company — otherwise known as MAL. "The company's first few statements included claims that the sludge wasn't toxic, that they were in no way responsible for the spill and that they would only pay for the victim's funerals," said Eniko Horvath, describing the resentment Hungarians felt toward MAL. Horvath is a Hungarian student at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was in Hungary with her family this summer.

Although MAL will be nationalized, this may not stop more companies from taking the same environmental risks. The Hungary toxic spill is an example of a tailing dam; unlike water dams, tailing dams often hold back water that contains deadly arsenic, mercury, and cyanide, but like water dams, they are located near rivers and streams. Mining projects are growing larger, and the risks that tailing dams pose are growing larger as well. The biggest dam in the world may soon be a tailing dam, proposed for headwaters in Bristol Bay, Alaska. "The most important lesson that I hope will come out of the spill is a strong feeling that corporations will be held accountable for their actions," said Horvath.

* Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, and Ukraine.

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory (follow this link for a more detailed explanation of this and other satellite images)

Reference:

Navas, A. et al. Effects of heavy metal soil pollution on nematode communities after the Aznalcóllar mining spill. Nematropica 40, 13–29 (20 June 2010).