The massive waste spill at a Hungarian aluminium plant earlier this month which left nine people dead has sparked a heated debate about how such toxic material is monitored, and whether the regulators are up to the task.
Hungary's worst ecological disaster has officials in Brussels and Budapest pointing fingers over what some claim is a loophole in European Union regulations that prevents classification of the "red mud" as a hazardous material.
Despite the devastating impact of the spill, owners of the Hungarian Aluminium (MAL) Ltd plant in Ajka, western Hungary, told local villagers the day after the spill that the effluent, a byproduct of refining bauxite ore, was not dangerous.
But if that is the case, asked Ajka's mayor, Bela Schwartz, "why are there over 100 people in hospital, many of then with lasting damage to their skin and eyes?"
Zoltan Illes, state secretary for the environment, told reporters six days after the spill that Hungary was pressing for the EU to designate the red mud from bauxite refining as a hazardous material. But European Commission spokesman Joe Hennon told the German Press Agency dpa that the storage of the industrial effluent would have been covered by existing EU directives on hazardous waste and pollution control.
Talk of reclassifying the waste was therefore something of a "red herring." "The Commission will certainly be expecting an investigation from the Hungarian government as to what happened and how it happened," he said.
It is the Commission's responsibility to check that the relevant EU directives have been transposed into Hungary's domestic law, he said. And it is the member state's responsibility to ensure that the relevant laws are applied, he noted.
Nevertheless, if Hungary wants to press for tighter controls in the wake of the Ajka disaster, the EU is ready to listen. "We are open to looking at all European legislation, and whether it can be tightened," Hennon said.
Recent statements by Hungarian government officials, however, give the impression that the Ajka red mud reservoir may have slipped through Hungary's own regulatory net. The Ajka plant had passed an inspection by Hungary's National Inspectorate for Environment on September 23, just days before the spill. However, the director of the state watchdog said in a radio interview six days after the spill that it was not his office's responsibility to check the stability of the huge red mud reservoir. "It did not fall within the remit of the environmental inspectorate to ascertain the technical condition of the structure," Istvan Csepregi said.
Environment secretary Illes subsequently called for government agencies to take over the responsibility for such structural checks from local planning authorities. "We must establish whether the current system of regulation is effective," government spokeswoman Anna Nagy said.
"In the meantime, the government has already launched immediate checks at other installations handing dangerous materials," Nagy told the German Press Agency dpa. Whatever the National Bureau of Investigation turns up in the course of its ongoing inquiries, the government seems determined to hold the owners of the Ajka plant to account.
"If you have an accident while driving your car, you must accept responsibility for it. It is the owner's responsibility to ensure that the vehicle is safe to drive," Nagy said.
Hungary became a centre of bauxite refining behind the Iron Curtain in the Communist era that ended in 1989. There is another red mud store at Mosonmagyarovar near the Austrian border and one at Almasfuzito in the north, just metres from the banks of the Danube, Europe's second-longest river.
Two weeks after the spill, the Ajka plant was up and running again, now under government control. Environmental groups have warned that the lessons learned from the disaster in western Hungary apply far beyond the borders of Hungary and other hastily industrialised former Communist countries in Eastern Europe.
"The safety of such plants may be worse here than in western Europe, but they are far better than those in parts of Asia or Africa," said Marton Vay, spokesman for Greenpeace Hungary.
"If we continue to demand cheap aluminium for everything from chocolate bar wrappers to drinks cans, these catastrophes will happen again," Vay told dpa.
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