FEATURE - Eastern Europe countries battle legacy of the past
Date: 24-Oct-01
Country: UK
Author: Adrian Dascalu
Dilapidated smelting and mining facilities continue to spew toxins into an already befouled environment in these countries, many of which are hoping to join the European Union.
The EU is using the lure of enlargement to push candidate states to put clean-up high on their agenda. It estimates that the 10 ex-communist countries will have to spend the equivalent of some $100 billion to meet its pollution standards.
Easier said than done, the governments of the EU hopefuls say they do not have the money.
The worst case appears to be Serbia.
Shattered by the long years of wars under the ousted Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic, the Balkan country seems unable to cope with the magnitude of its environmental problems.
Srdja Popovic, who advises the Serbian prime minister on environmental issues, said the country's reformist leadership had inherited a "devastating environmental situation" with no institutions to tackle the issue, no funding and a minimum awareness of ecological problems.
"What we have are outdated technologies and many environmental hot spots," Popovic told Reuters.
Estimates put at $180 million the costs just to rebuild a waste treatment system at a copper mine and smelter in the town of Bor, in eastern Serbia. The waste flows directly into the Krivaljska reka river, a threat to the whole Danube river basin.
"Nuclear or toxic waste is another unresolved issue. Waste management must be set up from the scrap," he said.
Cash-strapped Romania, Serbia's neighbour, also has an appalling pollution record.
The country's industrialisation drive in the early 1970s produced mammoth smelters. Most of them are now surrounded by mounds of toxic waste and a wasteland of rusting metal among ramshackle buildings.
Years of poor maintenance, sloppy practices, disregard for the environment under the communists and under-investment make the rehabilitation of smelters the biggest clean-up challenge for Romania, which is not short of environmental headaches.
Last year, the mining town of Baia Mare, near the border with Hungary, came under international scrutiny after the dam of a tailings pond at a local gold smelter collapsed and spilled lethal cyanide and heavy metals into the Danube, creating ecological havoc downstream to the Black Sea.
Valuable minerals such as gold are found in quantities invisible to the naked eye, so mining companies extract them by sifting through vast quantities of rock.
Most of the waste is piled in dumps, exposed to rain water and winds. The remaining ore must be milled and then bathed in a cyanide solution to disgorge flecks of the metals.
The Baia Mare accident, which made headlines around the globe, prompted the EU to amend its regulatory framework for mining activities. It made clear it was not ready to compromise on the toxic waste issue.
A senior EU official in Brussels told Reuters a detailed inventory of all abandoned and existing mines in the candidate countries would offer the Union a tool to check the EU aspirants' progress in dealing with their ecological hot spots.
In Romania's capital Bucharest, Environment Ministry director Florea Gabrian said:"We have no fresh data on pollution. However, we will carry out an appropriate analysis."
In the town of Zlatna in Romania's central province of Transylvania, a big state-run copper smelter continues to spew toxic clouds into the atmosphere because local authorities cannot afford to close the plant which provides jobs for thousands of people in the area.
Bulgaria, another EU laggard, has made better strides in dealing with waste from smelters.
Copper smelter Umicore Med (UM), formerly Union Miniere Pirdop Copper, completed a large part of a $25 million programme aimed at restoring polluted areas around the plant.
Under Bulgaria's environmental protection law, the state is responsible for environmental damage caused by former state enterprises.
Under the programme, UM removed 400,000 cubic