A dog gets caught in the toxic mud from the Ajka aluminium works (poor little dog, his feet are burning!)
Comment: Again, is this Virginia's future if the ban is lifted on uranium mining which has acres and acres of poison ponds holding all types of chemicals to produce yellow cake for profit? Demand the so call leaders of Virginia to keep the uranium ban! Plus tell the County Supervisors to zone our county so mining cannot take place, this is the best option!
AFP - 1 hour 11 minutes ago
BUDAPEST (AFP) - – A damburst of toxic sludge that killed at least four people and left scores needing treatment for chemical burns and other injuries could take up to a year to clean up, officials said.
"The clean-up and reconstruction could take months, even a year," Environment Secretary Zoltan Illes said.
On Monday, the retaining walls of a reservoir at an aluminium plant in Ajka in western Hungary collapsed, sending a toxic soup of industrial waste cascading through seven villages.
The devastation spread across an area of 40 square kilometers (15.4 square miles) in what officials say is Hungary's worst-ever chemical accident.
Three adults and one child were killed and 123 people were injured, while three people are still missing.
Karoly Tily, the mayor of Kolontar, the village where all four victims died, declared Wednesday a day of mourning, and the company which owned the reservoir, the Hungarian Aluminium Production and Trade Company (MAL), said it would foot the costs of the funerals.
Illes told online publication Langlovak in an interview that the overall costs of the clean-up and reconstruction "could reach tens of millions of euros (dollars)."
If MAL was unable to drum up the funds, "the sum will be borne by the Hungarian government, or it might be necessary to ask the European Union for aid," he said.
The tidal wave of sludge overturned cars, swept away possessions and raised fears that pollution leeching from it could reach the Danube River, which courses through Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine before flowing into the Black Sea.
But environmental organisation Greenpeace detected lead, chrome and arsenic in samples taken from a tributary of the Marcal, the river Torma.
The mud -- a residue from aluminium production which is highly corrosive and contains toxic heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, arsenic and chromium -- destroyed all vegetation other than trees and seeped into hundreds of houses in villages and contaminated waterways.
Dead Cat
A spokeswoman for the disaster relief services, Timea Petroczi, insisted that the drinking water system had not been affected, but "as a precautionary measure, people are not allowed to use the water wells".
Residents were also banned from eating any home-grown produce or from hunting or fishing in the region, she said.
Eyewitnesses say the force of the wave was so strong that cars were sucked out from their garages and it tore out windows and doors, covering everything.
"I've lost everything. We've lost everything," said one man standing in front of the remains of his house, which he said he had just spent 5,000 euros (6,900 dollars) in renovating.
Two days after the disaster, cars, debris and dead animals still littered streets and fields.
"It is still chaos here, nobody knows what to do or where to start," said one volunteer worker.
"I think it's a disgrace. Things are going so slowly. The flood was on Monday and now on Wednesday we're still waiting for orders," he said.
Company chief Zoltan Bakonyi warned that if production were not resumed soon, MAL could go bankrupt.
The company is the sole large employer in the impoverished region and has a workforce of 1,100
Read more:
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20101007/tts-hungary-accident-chemical-c1b2fc3.html
