People at the social and economic fringes of society are also those most vulnerable to the hazards of environmental degradation, and Rudnany, Slovakia’s Roma population is no exception.

Social and economic conditions are forcing many of Europe’s Roma population to the fringes of society. Roma are often born separately, live separately—and, as a graveyard in the east Slovakian village of Rudnany reveals, even buried separately. In addition to facing an array of socio-economic woes, the collapse of Rudnany’s mining economy has also left the local Roma population to bear an unequal share of environmental stress.

Rudnany was undoubtedly divided along ethnic lines in the past, but former employment opportunities at the now defunct mining company had at least allowed for multiple interactions between the majority and minority populations; current conditions, however, also expose the magnitude of inequality that many of the world’s most disadvantaged people suffer as a result of environmental degradation.

As a graduate student at Central European University, I witnessed such conditions while performing field work in eastern Slovakia from 2002–2005. In Patoracke, just outside Rudnany, I visited cellars in which up to 10 family members slept on sinking concrete floors in structures that threatened to collapse at any moment. Rudnany’s municipal government is trying to work closely with NGOs and international organisations to address these social and environmental threats, but it will be difficult to solve anything quickly unless the state gets more involved.

Stark divisions

From a distance, Rudnany’s most identifiable feature is an abandoned mineshaft and lift tower in the very centre of the valley. Most of the local inhabitants occupy nice, two-storey homes that encircle the old mine works. The town is surrounded by forests that betray a long-term proximity to industrial production. If you enter Rudnany by the main road from Spisska Nova Ves, the nearest town, the first thing you see is a Roma community living on an abandoned and derelict factory site at Zabijanec. If it happens to be summer, you might see children playing in the polluted stream that runs nearby.

Leaving Zabijanec, you encounter two-story houses and apartment blocks, beyond which is the hill that was home to the mining company administration at Patoracke—a building that looks like a bombed and gutted relic from World War Two. On the slopes surrounding the building are small huts and houses cobbled together with scrap materials. You might still be in Rudnany, but you’ve crossed into a different world. The line might not be visible, but the inhabitants feel the demarcation clearly enough.

Up to the beginning of the 1990s, mining and metal processing were the main sources of local employment. The sudden collapse of the industry had drastic social consequences for all inhabitants, but the minority Roma population has suffered most.

A living nightmare

The Rudnany area has been identified as one of Slovakia’s 10 most problematic ‘hot spots.’ As a result of heavy industrial development, the whole territory is contaminated by toxic emissions, waste dumps and abandoned mines. The toxic mine tailings contain traces of mercury, which can cause mental illness, birth defects, kidney failure and other diseases. The abandoned mines are gradually collecting water from underground and surface sources, and in a few years they will start to release highly toxic effluents into the environment.

There are two main shantytowns in Rudnany: Patoracke, home to some 270 people (after two waves of resettlement into public housing—the latest in March 2007); and Zabijanec, home to roughly 500. Several families also live in two segregated blocks of apartments on the western outskirts of town.

Patoracke was settled at the beginning of the 1970s, and was at one time home to as many as 800 people. Two water taps serve the entire community, which is also without a sewerage system or sewerage treatment facility. Hygienic conditions are extremely poor—especially in summer. There are no toilets with running water, and no places to bathe. Children collect water in plastic jars and bottles, and an abundance of rotting, uncollected garbage surrounds the shantytown.

Patoracke lies about a kilometre above Rudnany, and its sole transportation link is an unpaved road. Snow or inclement weather often prevents children from attending school in the winter. Access for emergency medical treatment is also problematic. Dotted with makeshift homes built from waste material, stones and tin, the shantytown is on company land where public or commercial use is technically prohibited. The Roma are neither owners nor tenants. The former administrative building, meanwhile, is not an existing legal entity, and it was supposed to have been destroyed and decommissioned at the beginning of the 1970s.

Part of Patoracke actually sank in 2001, and while the incident did not cause any fatalities, it did provoke the government into taking emergency action. The first plan was to provide some housing by reconstructing the old mining company’s administrative building—a hundred metres from the shantytown. While landslides and unstable surfaces are no longer a problem, the location is still isolated from the majority population and surrounded by waste dumps. New flats were created for 27 families in 2007, but more than 200 people still occupy the shantytown as they wait for the remaining flats to be built or simply have no place else to go.

Zabijanec, the second shantytown, is located directly in the former industrial zone. There is a block of buildings built for mining company administration, but which have since been transformed into unofficial housing units surrounded by huts to accommodate the number of homeless. Metal ore was collected nearby and the area was used as a transport hub. The company relocated these activities closer to the actually mining sites in the mid-1960s and abandoned the buildings. Roma began to occupy the buildings a few years later, and have lived there ever since. The Roma dwellings lie directly behind the concrete front of the building that was once used to store poly-metal ores. Piles of mining waste shroud the foot of the hill.

The settlement has one water tap with drinkable water for roughly 460 inhabitants—a pipe at the bottom of the hill. The source is a nearby forest reservoir that collects underground water. Shantytown inhabitants (mostly women and children) collect the water in bottles and jars and bring it into their homes. There is no sewerage system or sewerage treatment in the settlement, nor do the homes have toilets.

There are two primary sources of pollution in Zabijanec. The first is the surrounding area’s toxic dumps of mining waste. Located on the slope above the settlement, rain and snowmelts release high contents of heavy metals into the settlement. Inhabitants then track contaminated soil into their houses or breathe in toxic dust during summer. The second source of contamination is the settlement location itself, the soil of which carries residues of heavy metals, oils and other hazardous materials from previous industrial activity.

The example of Rudnany serves to illustrate how social and environmental aspects influence each other, and should encourage us to seek ways to address problems faced by populations that endure both extreme poverty and constant environmental threats.