Hungary races to raise dam to avert new toxic spill
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungarian authorities raced to finish building an emergency dam by Tuesday to hold back a threatened second spill of toxic sludge, and hunted for clues to the causes of last week's deadly industrial spill.
A million cubic meters of red mud, a by-product of alumina production, burst out of a plant reservoir into villages and waterways in Hungary last Monday, killing seven people, injuring 123 and fouling rivers including a tributary of the Danube.
"We hope to have the dam finished by Tuesday," Prime Minister Viktor Orban's spokesman told TV2 on Monday.
"We have 4,000 people and 300 machines working at the scene so we are doing our utmost to prevent another tragedy."
With the nearby town of Devecser, home to 5,400 people, still on alert and the village of Kolontar evacuated, the cause of the disaster -- described by the prime minister as Hungary's worst ecological catastrophe -- remained unclear.
While recovery crews scrambled to raise the emergency dam, police were talking to Zoltan Bakonyi, the head of MAL Zrt, which owns the burst reservoir.
"Mr. Bakonyi is being questioned by the police," his assistant Barbara Nagy told Reuters.
"Since the accident happened Monday last week, you can imagine this is not the first time he has been questioned."
In a statement issued on its website late on Sunday, MAL said the walls of the burst sludge reservoir met the prescribed rigidity standards, based on the findings of a technical survey carried out in 1995.
SOIL STRUCTURE
Gusztav Winkler, a professor at Budapest Technical University, who surveyed the site when the reservoir was being built 30 years ago, told Reuters the structure of the soil made the reservoir unstable.
The prime minister said earlier human error was probably behind the spill and promised the "the toughest possible consequences" to ensure such a disaster did not recur.
Orban will inform lawmakers of the government's plans in parliament later on Monday, which may also include nationalizing MAL's alumina factory, Hungarian media reported earlier.
Tibor Dobson, a spokesman for disaster crews, said evacuated residents of the village of Kolontar must remain in emergency accommodation. One person is still missing.
Kolontar was evacuated on Saturday after cracks appeared in the northern wall of the reservoir, threatening a second spill of the toxic red sludge.
Dobson told Reuters on Monday the latest checks performed on the damaged northern wall of the sludge reservoir showed no further disturbance.
The latest water samples taken on Monday showed that alkalinity levels in the Danube and the river Raba were back to normal, the interior ministry said on its website.
A team of EU environmental experts arrived in Hungary on Monday to help authorities.
(Reporting by Gergely Szakacs and Marton Dunai; editing by Andrew Roche)
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