Advertise The Danube β Europe's second-longest waterway β appears to have escaped immediate harm from the recent Hungarian spill. It hosts more than species of birds and 45 freshwater species of fish. Memories of an environmental disaster a decade ago in Romania have triggered emergency measures for Tulcea and other suspect sites.
That's when a reservoir burst at a gold mine in the northwestern town of Baia Mare on Jan. Romania's Environment Minister Laszlo Borbely said last week that his country is accelerating cleanup plans for 1, contaminated sites. He said Romania could access up to million euros of EU funds to decontaminate pollution sites.
Some of the communist Eastern Europe's worst environmental horrors were in Romania β among them Copsa Mica, where TV images of black toxic soot drifting from chimneys of a rubber-dye factory onto houses, fields, grazing sheep and townspeople shocked the world in International outrage contributed to the plant's closure in But "historic pollution" with heavy metals from the 40 years that was rubber-dye plant was functioning continues to foul the air.
Life expectancy in the area is 9 years lower than the national average of In East Europe, the Danube is shared by seven countries, and it has been the victim of toxic spills even before Hungary's caustic red muck. Among the worst incidents came 11 years ago during NATO's bombing of Serbia, when warplanes targeted fertilizer and vinyl chloride manufacturing plants and an oil refinery in the town of Pancevo, near Belgrade, releasing mercury, dioxins and other deadly compounds into the river.
Foreign funding after the war allowed authorities to contain some of the leaks, but sporadic emissions of toxic gases continue to drive air pollution above accepted levels. Also near Belgrade, an open pit in Obrenovac just meters yards from the Sava β a Danube tributary β contains millions of tons of coal ash from the Nikola Tesla Coal Power Plant.
