DEATH BY RED SLUDGE

SIX MONTHS UPDATE: LOOKS LIKE THE TAXPAYERS WILL FOOT THE BILL

Six months after a red tide of death sludge swept through this area of western Hungary, downstream towns are still ruined and mostly deserted, as citizens continue to wait for the cleanup and financial assistant. With 40 sq. kilometers (15.4 sq. miles) affected and sixty families awating relocation, the government has banned the planting of vegetables in the affected area. Wildlife has still not returned to the area.

The firm that ran the plant in Ajka, the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, is now run by the government. Authorities have also frozen the assets of the owners as a criminal investigation continues. Why criminal? Because the company had ample evidence, including a prior incident at the same plant, that the toxic waste storage impoundment was not safe. (Similar problems exist at over 700 sites in the U.S., with similar lack of interest). Cynical observers, none of whom are affilated with the CatMap Editorial Board, note that the government is attempting to divert attention from their own lame efforts at oversight. The EU has identified several hazardous chemical sites in more that 100 other contaminated areas in Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. While legal procedures are under way, concerns remain that Hungarian taxpayers will have to foot the multimillion euro bill. The company was insured for $50,000 euros.

ORIGINAL STORY: OCTOBER 2010

It's a small world and people are just people. That's why there are so many similarities in the way the way the companies responsible for major toxic events (and the governments that protect them) behave the world over.

Take the case of the toxic sludge that swamped three Hungarian village in early October of 2010. Although the biblical 200 million gallon deluge (one million cubic meters producting a six foothigh surge wave) killed ten and caused severe chemical burns right through the clothes of hundreds of others, MAL Rt, the owner of the alumnina plant, says the highly caustic material isn't hazardous waste by European Union safety standards. It may not be hazardous, but the force of the initial wave was powerful enough that cars were sucked out from their garages and windows and doors were torn out of buildings. A bridge in Kolontar was also swept away. So it wasn't a catastrophe unless you were standing in from of it, in which case you were dead.

Furthermore, the company says it has complied with all laws and did nothing wrong; there was nothing further that could be done to prevent the breach of the 24 acre sludge storage pond. The event, claims MAL Rt, is "a natural catastrophe."

In a similar vein, Massey Energy described a 300 million gallon Kentucky spill in 2000 as an act of God. Didn't hear about that one on Fox? See the right column for more.

BLINDED BY SCIENCE:
The dark red metallurgical waste, a by product of aluminum manufacturing, is 1,000 times more caustic than the dust at ground zero on 9/11. Burns on human skin are caused by its extreme akaline pH factor, which is the opposite of acid but just as deadly. Furthermore, the by-products of bauxite are known to the same groups of heavy metals found in coal slurry and other processes that cook coal or ore. These include lead, cadmium, arsenic, selenium and chromium.

If MAL Rt's claim that the red sludge is not hazardous is true, then what, might we ask, is considered hazardous waste?

MORE ECOLOGICAL DISASTERS WAITING TO HAPPEN IN EASTERN EUROPE...AND THE EASTERN U.S.

Toxic sludge disasters are to be expected from the formerly godless Eastern European Communist countries. When your parents said "Dirty Commies", this is exactly what they meant. Their toxic legacy will be with us for centuries. In terms of sludge disasters waiting to happen right now, environmentalists warn of potential threats from seven other storage ponds about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Budapest that hold 12 million tons of sludge accumulated since 1945 - more than 10 times the amount that spilled this week. In the Danube River region, 97 contaminated locations have been identified. Abandoned mines in Romania leach waters contaminated by cyanide and other heavy metals into rivers. Another Hungarian chemical plant produces more than 100,000 tons of toxic substances a year. Soil in eastern Slovakia is contaminated with cancer-producing PCBs. And then there's Chernobyl and Lake Karachay, CatMap Hall of Fame sites nonpareil.

Luckily we live in the U.S. where the Environmental Protection Agency protects us from these kinds of events. Right?

Wrong. The U.S. had got Europe beat by a mile in terms of toxic sludge spills and spills waiting to happen: Following the 2008 1 billion gallon coal slurry tsumani near Harrison, Tennessee, the EPA got around to conducting an inventory of coal sludge impoundments.

To date, they have identified over 450 so called CCR's (Coal Combustion Residues), of which 49 are classified as high hazard. One of these is located 150 feet away from Marsh Fork Elementary School in West Virginia. Blasting takes place on a nearby mountaintop, which is being removed courtesy of Massey Energy.

Surely this was a one time disaster that is unlikely to recur? No, it is in fact just the latest (albeit the keep escalating in scale) of a series of such events:

On Oct. 11, 2000 the Big Branch Refuse Impoundment coal-waste reservoir near Inez, KY spewed 300 million gallons of toxic sludge into two tributaries of the Big Sandy River, which courses along the Kentucky-West Virginia border before emptying into the Ohio River. The impoundment was owned by Martin County Coal, a division of Massey Energy. On its 75-mile path of destruction, the sludge obliterated wildlife, killed 1.6 million fish, washed away roads, bridges and homes, and contaminated the water systems of 27,623 people.

Even before the inauguration, the Bush Administration halted the investigation and began the cover up.

In 1972, West Virginia's Buffalo Creek Flood destroyed over 500 homes with a 30-foot high, 132 million gallon wave of coal slurry. As was the case with the Hungarian event, the dam had been declared satisfactory by a federal inspector a few days before and a coverup ensued.

For the record, the difference between the red sludge and coal slurry is that the latter is far more hazardous. The other difference is that the former dirty commies of the backward state of Hungary arrested the chief executive of MAL Rt and investigated him for environmental negligence. That is the difference between a brutal former Eastern Bloc nation and an enlightened democracy such as the United States.