The story out of Hungary is disturbing, where a bauxite plant's waste-water pond gave way and dumped a flood of red toxic sludge into the neighboring town and into the river system. The news of the day is that it now has made its way into the Danube, the main river of southeastern Europe.
The headline wrote itself, and does two things at once; first, it give a bad visual earwig (eyewig?) from 2001, where Blue Danube is the soundtrack while the shuttle docks at the space station orbiting Earth. Yes, I am like the aging narcissist, I'm dating myself.
Secondly, since a lot of the sludge might have been the product of the Iron Curtain days, it begs a cheap shot at the Communist's lack of environmental care during their days running Eastern Europe.
However, it is a cheap shot, for we've seen a couple of bad leakages into our waterways that didn't get as much press, even if we write off the BP case as a one-off likely not to be repeated. A similar coal-waste pond let loose in Kentucky almost a year ago, doing a number on the rivers and towns downstream. Here in Michigan, a oil pipeline leak did similar damage to the rivers southwest of Lansing earlier this year. Thankfully, both got contained before the stuff got into major waterways like the Danube.
This type of accident is the kind of environmental issue that shouldn't be a left-right fight; these are external costs to the communities that the company's making them need to do a better job of preventing. Meanwhile,the communities that get hit clean up as best they can; pray for the folks in Hungary and the rest of SE Europe as this heads downstream.
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