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The Tisza River has given us another lesson in our
inability to live sustainably with water. Unless we begin to learn from
such lessons, water-related disasters will continue.
By Paul Csagoly Three disasters struck Hungary's Tisza River since last January. Soon afterwards, record floods hit Central Europe. Connecting these events should teach us some valuable lessons about our flawed ways in dealing with water. But will they? The lessons are simple. One, floods are natural events. Two, our actions make floods bigger. And three, we have made ourselves, and ecosystems, more vulnerable to those bigger floods. In the natural world, floods and heavy rains have always been a normal, and often beneficial, part of the water cycle. In the Middle Ages, some 25 percent of Hungary regularly became covered by floodwaters in the springtime, says the World Wide Fund for Nature-Hungary's Head of Conservation, Gyorgy Gado. "Much of this water, especially along the Danube and Tisza rivers, was diverted into natural floodplains, bringing richly fertilized silt. Once the waters drew back, farmers knew they would be left with highly fertile soil." Fish would also spawn in the calmer "artificial ponds" in the floodplains. And floods were less dangerous, given the space to spread out, unlike today where they are contained in fast, small spaces. Normal floods in the Middle Ages are one thing. The recent massive floods in Central Europe are another. Soon after the toxic spills early this year, Hungary, Romania and parts of Serbia were hit with century-record floods caused by heavy rains and melting snow. In Romania, 10 people died and over 60,000 hectares of farmland were damaged, reported Transitions Online magazine. Only three years earlier, eastern Czech Republic and southwestern Poland were also hit by "floods of the century" (see Bulletin Summer 1997 issue) which killed 52 people in southwest Poland and caused over USD 2 billion in damages in the Czech Republic, says Antonin Bucek of the Czech non-governmental organization (NGO), Union for the Morava River. Central Europe is not alone regarding floods. International news now regularly reports on record floods throughout the world, from Mozambique to Central America to China. Many scientists now see the record-breaking floods as evidence of extreme climatic conditions induced by global warming. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) supports the argument that climate change is linked to the increasing ferocity of natural disasters, adding that losses from natural disasters between 1986 and 1995 were eight times higher than in the 1960s, and three million people have perished as a result of natural disasters in the past 30 years. Unfortunately, many agree that global efforts to curb climate change are largely inadequate, slowed down by narrow political and economic interests. UNEP reveals "little sign that efforts are sufficiently far-reaching to have any impact on the problem." As a result, floods, and our vulnerability to the damages that they cause, are expected to increase. Besides global warming, human activities in Central Europe contribute to increased flooding in other ways, one being deforestation. Extensive forestry operations and pulp mills can be found throughout the upper Danube Basin and Carpathian Mountains in Romania, northern Hungary, Ukraine and Slovakia, said Gyorgy Droppa of the Hungarian NGO, Danube Circle, to Environmental News Service (ENS). The resulting deforestation leads to increased surface water runoff, water flows, and therefore greater flood intensities - the Tisza River included. Another problem is poor floodplain management, says Andreas Beckmann of the NGO, the Environmental Partnership for Central Europe. Natural floodplains are needed to absorb the impacts of floods. They are not good sites for large residential, agricultural or industrial developments - now common practices in Central Europe. Not respecting this equals unsustainable development. Finally, natural flood prevention systems that relied on floodplains have been replaced by manmade, engineered systems. These, says Bucek, have been proven inadequate by the recent record floods in Central Europe which defied both dikes and dams. The straightening, or "straight-jacketing," of rivers and streams has further resulted in the removal of natural loops and folds, thereby reducing the length of rivers and increasing their water flows and risks. Having contributed to the increasing number and intensity of floods in Central Europe, we are also now ever more vulnerable to them. More industrial hotspots throughout the region (and the world) are just waiting to become disastrous spills. The three toxic spills (January 30, March 10, March 15) which originated from mining operations in Maramures County, Romania, and flowed to Hungary's Tisza River (for full coverage, see April 2000 issue of The Bulletin) are only the most recent examples - and these were not even induced by significantly heavy floods. According to the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River, there are 114 industrial and mining hotspots in the Danube River Basin where major problems could occur. Romania leads the list with 53, 26 of which are "high priority," and Yugoslavia has nine, all high priority. A recent UNEP report shows that there are 215 dams used in mining operations in Maramures County alone. Environmentalists and experts are strongly calling for a review of environmental risks throughout the basin and for closing the worst hotspots. "There are technologies which are outdated and too dangerous to be operated in those areas," Droppa told ENS. However, more transnational companies already have future plans to operate in Romania, reviving abandoned mines and introducing poor technologies. Somehow, the 1997 Czech flood of the century has been nearly completely forgotten by Czech policy-makers who drew few lessons from them, argues Beckmann. But public participation and pressure from NGOs continue to keep hopes alive. During the 1997 flood, it was individuals, communities and NGOs, in fact, that provided the fastest and most effective relief to stricken communities, argues Bucek. Public pressure is also on in Baia Mare, Romania, the home of Aurul SA's mining operations which caused the January 30 Tisza spill. A local NGO, the Association of Professional NGOs for Social Assistance in Baia Mare (ASSOC), is trying to convince local authorities to force Aurul to clean up farmland contaminated with heavy metals from past spills. "Some of the local farmers have nothing now," says ASSOC Executive Director, Edit Pop, adding that farmers have asked for compensation for their losses from Aurul, without success. Such efforts are difficult in a place like Baia Mare, considered to be Romania's most polluted area with life expectancies ten years lower than the Romania average. Besides being home to Aurul, Baia Mare hosts an old lead smelter and car battery recycling plant, among other operations. A recent World Health Organization report shows that Baia Mare's children have blood lead levels nearly six times higher than acceptable levels and that exposure to lead in Baia Mare is among the highest ever recorded. "Residents are growing food for themselves in highly contaminated soil," says Pop. Lack of money to improve things, she says, is the common problem for residents, ASSOC and local authorities alike. Nonetheless, using limited resources, ASSOC has been successful in informing local residents and children about toxic-related health risks. Now they hope to get funding to test fields in Baia Mare, to see what cash-strapped farmers might be able to grow, and sell, in the future. In the end, have the lessons been learned from the floods and disasters? On the positive side, Pop is happy that the BBC recently came to Baia Mare to film a documentary about the city's plight, to tell the world. On the other hand, Aurul's Baia Mare facility re-opened in late May. "People here are extremely angry," says Pop. Let's just hope it doesn't rain too hard. |
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