Сборник материалов международной научной конференции студентов, магистрантов, аспирантов



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Н.С. Козлова


Республика Беларусь, Брест, БрГУ имени А.С. Пушкина

Научный руководитель – Л.Е. Левонюк


OUR PLANET CALLS FOR HELP: ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER IN BAIA MARE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES



The Earth is the only planet in the solar system where there is life. If you look down at the Earth from a plane you will see how wonderful our planet is. You will see blue seas and oceans, rivers and lakes, high snow-capped mountains, green forests and fields. For centuries man lived in harmony with nature until industrialization brought human society into conflict with the natural environment. Today, the contradictions between man and nature have acquired a dramatic character. With the development of civilization man’s interference in nature has increased. Every year the world’s industry pollutes the atmosphere with millions of tons of dust and other harmful substances. The seas and rivers are poisoned with industrial waste, chemical and sewage discharge. People who live in big cities are badly affected by harmful discharge from plants and city transport and by the increasing noise level which is bad for human health, by lack of fresh air and clean water.

In Baia Mare, in Romania, in the evening of 30 January 2000, a dam broke a tailings pond, which had a serious environmental disaster consequence occurred.

After heavy rains broke out on January 30, 2000 probably around 23 clock in the city of Baia Mare in northwest Romania, the dam of a gold ore processing plant. 100,000 m³, according to other information at least 300,000 m³ mixed with heavy metals Natrium cyanidlauge flooded the adjoining area and came across the Sasar-Bach and the rivers Lapus and Somes in the Tisza and the Danube. On the afternoon of 1 February 2000, loaded with 100 tonnes of cyanide pollution wave reached the border with Hungary, after two weeks, they flowed into the Danube. On 28 February 2000, after four weeks, she came to a total of 2000 kilometers of flow path in the Danube Delta in Tulcea in Romania.

The breach in the dam was closed until 2 February 2000. Fish are approximately one thousand times more sensitive to cyanide than humans, and the lethal poison killed hundreds of tonnes of fish in River Szamosand in Tisza up to a town called Tokaj. There was a significant damage below the Tokaj and in the Lake Tisza. Further down the river, the pollution was less, although it has been shown that the cyanide killed fish as far downstream as Yugoslavia. In total, 64 species of fish were killed. Besides the immeasurable damage among fish species, which is the most visible sign of the disaster, cyanide pollution has eradicated all life, down to tiny organisms, throughout the rivers.

The disaster has resulted in the devastation of larger parts of planktonneic organisms of the rivers Tisza and Szamos. Perhaps equally significant is the huge amount of exterminated water fleas and insects that are an indispensable part of the food chain.

In addition, numerous water birds (bald eagles, cormorants, and blue herons) and mammals (deer, otter, and fox) were affected by eating contaminated fish and drinking water.

Moreover, the ground water resources for people along the river could become contaminated with heavy metals (in complex form; zinc concentrations, copper and silver were also detected) in the medium term.

A massive fish kill was the result. More than 1,400 tons of fish were killed. It was the largest environmental disaster in Eastern Europe since the reactor accident at Chernobyl in 1986 and had serious consequences for the environment in Romania. The livelihoods of several hundred fishermen along the Tisza River in Hungary were destroyed. In some Hungarian cities, the water supply was interrupted for several days. In Romania, the poison flowed via ditches in the village Bozânta Mare and poisoned drinking water and soil located at the dam.

The causes of the accident were a mixture of design flaws, lack of control, insufficient risk management and extreme weather conditions. According to research by the inspection probably caused a local heave an overflow of the dam, followed by a 25 m wide and about 2.5 m deep breach arose. So it could be an uncontrolled break, as there was no permanent security controls over the pipes, deposits and the settling tank. The exact date and the actual amount of water could only be estimated because there were no permanent measurements.

The European mass media publicized the pollution continent-wide, leading to mass cancellation of already booked trips. This led to a reduction in both domestic and international tourism due to the river pollution. White water canoeing activity dramatically decreased by around 90% after the contamination events. This is due to the clear data that, instead of the usual 18 000–20,000 annual guests hosted in the Tisza region, only about 1,500 visited in 2000. Along the banks of the Lake Tisza, there was a 33% reduction in the number of German and Austrian tourists – the most striking and severe loss to the regions tourism. These losses are particularly painful in a region that has very few operating enterprises and alternatives. Due to these facts, the damage to the Hungarian tourism sector was sizeable, due also to Hungary’s significant dependence on tourism.

Security measures at the gold processing in Baia Mare have now been improved. An additional catch basin was built. The pipes and the dam are now committed every two hours and checked so that leaks can be quickly identified and corrected. The cyanide concentration is also measured regularly.



People in Europe, but especially in Hungary were shocked by the environmental catastrophe. Unfortunately these kinds of “accidents” are not unusual and the consequences of this accident were the largest ever in Central and Eastern Europe. “We use this river to fish and swim and now it's a danger in the middle of our towns. People are very emotional about it. We have never had anything like this,” said a local man. “When a person passes away in Hungary, relatives and friends throw flowers on the grave. This week it is the Tisza itself they have been mourning.  A black flag was raised at the city hall in Szeged (Hungarian city located along the river bank) where residents have held candle-lit vigils and dropped flowers off the bridges.”


  1. 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill [Электронный ресурс]. – Режим доступа: http://memim.com/2000-baia-mare-cyanide-spill.html/. - Дата доступа: 10.03.2015.

  2. The Tisza River Spill [Электронный ресурс]. – Режим доступа: http://www1.american.edu/ted/tisza-spill.htm/. - Дата доступа: 10.03.2015.

Статья посвящена проблеме экологических катастроф, возникающих в результате хозяйственной деятельности человека, и их непоправимых последствий для природы, животного и растительного мира нашей планеты.



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