Gábor Szabó

Cleaning Up

Environmental Awareness before and after 1989

 

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In Hungary, as in all the former socialist countries, environmental concerns were subordinated to industrial production; pro- tection came last on the list of issues to be considered before launching a project. Dozens of horrifying examples could be cited to illustrate the attitude of the industrial companies. On one occasion, a specially protected stalactite cave (fortunately since cleaned up) was filled with slag to speed up "progress". Two of the country's finest natural landscapes were disfigured by cement works, with cement dust gradually covering the cheerful red rooftop tiles for miles around. Insistence on uneconomical coal and bauxite mining in Transdanubia reached the point of disturbing the karst water bal- ance. To free the mining shafts from water, the water level of the limestone hills was lowered so much that springs went dry, and the thermal spring of Héviz, feeding Europe's largest natural thermal water lake and a spa of international renown, was nearly ruined. Now, fifteen years after mining has ended, pre-intervention water conditions have still not been fully restored.
By the end of the 1980s, it became wide- ly known that nearly two thirds of the coun- try's population were living in areas suffer- ing from medium or heavy air pollution. One of verdant Buda's main thoroughfares became infamous when, on the initiative of civil organizations, lead levels in the bood of children living nearby were measured- they turned out to be several times higher than those established as the upper limit for adults. Heavy metals, including lead, also affected the health of people in an outer district of the capital where a long obsolete battery processing and metal foundry plant had been operating for eighty years. The plant was closed down in 1989, due to pressure from the local Green asso- ciation.
The skeleton really fell out of the cup- board after the change of regime in 1989. Right upon the long-awaited departure of Soviet troops from the country, at the beginning of the 1990s, the first democrati- cally elected government found itself facing a huge problem, swept carefully under the carpet up to then. Wells near former Soviet army barracks were being directly threatened by diesel oil and kerosene that had simply been buried in or near the train- ing grounds, or by leakage from rusting tanks. From a barracks near Budapest, for example, kerosene seeped, along with the water that was being collected, toward the drinking wells supplying the capital. The government undertook the clean-up. This eventually provided a powerful counter- claim against Moscow which, acknowledg- ing the 64 billion forints, worth of environ- mental damage done, abandoned its own claim for compensation for buildings and other "investments" by the Soviet Army during its "temporary sojourn" in Hungary. (That was how the occupation from 1945 to 1992 was of-ficially referred to.)
The Soviet Army, of course, was by far not the only cause of soil and ground water pollution, and not even the main one. For instance, the Lehel refrigerator-manufac- turing plant in Jászberény in Eastern Hungary (succeeded by the Swedish-owned Lehel-Electrolux company), regarded in the 1970s and 80s as one of the most advanced enterprises in the country, buried a con- siderable part of its waste in seven huge pits. Cleaning up that mess, with the partic- ipation of the Swiss- American corporation Comco-Martech, cost some 2.4 billion forints. Near another large country town, far more dangerous toxic materials, steel drums containing tetrachloro-benzenes, were deposited in the 1970s and 80s by a Budapest company. Removing them and treating the site cost 3 billion forints. Cases of this type would take pages to list in full. In some towns and villages, the very foun- dations of houses were eaten away by haz- ardous chemical wastes that had been buried years earlier. Following the passing of the Environment Act in 1995, illegal deposits of hazardous wastes were system- atically surveyed, and the government spent more than 83 billion forints on assessment and remedies. According to official esti- mates, some 30- 40,000 polluted sites are still awaiting clean-up under a giant project similar to the US Superfund. The project is expected to take thirty years, and the costs are estimated by the Ministry of the Environment at a thousand billion forints.

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At the end of the 1980s, out of more than 3000 Hungarian towns and villages, only 379 had a proper sewerage system, and more than fifty of those released untreated sewage into the rivers. Only 40 per cent of all homes were linked into a system. It is a major achievement that five years into the new century, 800 towns and villages have proper sewerage, and more than half of all homes are connected. Hungary could not have financed this by itself: increasing support from the European Union helped the sewage system grow by 90 per cent (at some 22,000 kilo- metres) between 1991 and 2000. In that ten-year period, 200 billion forints were spent on development, but the brunt of the work still lies ahead.
The situation in the capital, however, is disastrous. Currently half of Budapest's 600- 800,000 cubic meters of sewage is released into the Danube without prior treatment. Fortunately, the river's flow, 2,000 cubic meters per second, handles the city's "donation" surprisingly well; indeed, people can swim in the lowest section and upstream of Budapest without any health hazard, as thousands do on any hot summer weekend. By 2009, it is to be hoped that, through a 100 billion forint project financed largely by the EU, 90 per cent of the capital's sewage will be cleaned (growing to 100 per cent within a few years) before being released into the Danube.
Without such EU support, fresh waters would be in a far worse state all over the country. In the absence of aid from Brussels (more than 100 billion forints since 2000), Hungary would not have been able to adopt EU environmental directives, requesting only four derogations. (Three out of these four have run out.) There is only one remaining, the so-called sewage directive, which Hungary is still unable to meet. Knowing the above figures, this is hardly surprising, since it would be clearly impossible to supply every village of more than 2,000 inhabitants with proper sewerage overnight. Hungary asked for, and was granted, a ten-year reprieve; it is not until 2010 that Budapest's sewage must be fully cleaned. To achieve that, the above- mentioned project must be completed in 2009, along with another similar EU-supported programme to cover the remaining 10 per cent.
All these programmes demand huge sacrifices. By 2015, meeting increasingly stricter norms will cost some 2000 billion forints. Not only sewage, but also waste treatment must be improved. In more than a thousand towns and villages, for example, up-to-date waste collection and disposal will have to wait until a dozen waste deposit plants servicing large regions have been built. It must be admitted that the number of selective waste collection locations would not be likely to increase if EU regulations did not make this mandatory.

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Blue Danube Waltz

The International Court at The Hague, reorganised after World War II, was ignored by the Soviet Union and its satellites for half a century. They refused to recognise it, declaring that minor differences between socialist states would be settled in a "fraternal" manner "within the family", not by a "biased" international forum. The Hungarian government switched positions rather hurriedly after abandoning its alliance with Moscow. Without any preparation or warn- ing, on October 23, 1992, it unexpectedly turned to the Court and requested help in settling its dispute with Czechoslovakia. A day earlier, Czechoslovakia, as had been long expected, chan- nelled a 40 kilometre stretch of the Danube to its side of the border despite objections from Hungary. (The frontier runs mid-channel.) The riverbed was blocked by huge concrete blocks upstream on Slovak territory. Ever since, the water returns to the old bed (marking the frontier for another 100 kilometres) only after passing through an artificial channel on the Slovak side and driving the 720 megawatt turbines of the Bős (Gabcikovo) hydroelectric plant. Under an agreement signed in 1977, Hungary participated in the building of the dam, conceived as a joint project. Then, partly because money was running out and partly because of growing public criticism, operations were halted by the government in 1989, temporarily at first and later finally. The Slovaks, however, completed their own section in 1992. After much hesitation, the agreement was abrogated by Hungary in the same year; the Czechoslovaks maintained that there were no provisions in it for its unilateral cancellation. It was the impotence and delaying tactics of the Hungarian government which deepened the conflict. In Slovakia, silenced after the Warsaw Pact military intervention of 1968, the giant project was a national cause, while Hungary, with its cautious reforms and its far livelier domestic political life, witnessed an increasingly sharp debate- because debate was allowed to develop- over the expected negative environmental impacts. According to the original plan, of the average flow of two thousand cubic meters of water per second through the natural main water- course, only 50 to 200 cubic meters per second would remain in the same riverbed; the rest would be used to produce electric power. Although half of the power generated at Bős- Gabcikovo would have gone to Hungary, environmentalists, including members of the Academy of Sciences, warned that the expected profits would be far exceeded by the foreseeable environmental damage and ecological hazards. In the border area next to the system, the character of the Danube would change completely. The river would break into innumerable channels, destroy and build islands all over its widening flood-plain, and in general behave in the same way as in its delta- with the difference that this area lies midway along its 2700 kilometre course. The redi-rection of the flow would destroy water life in the area- partly because some of it would simply run dry, and partly because the species inhabiting it would be unable to adapt to the altered water course and water quality conditions. Because of these doubts, Hungary hoped to halt and re-examine the project at the last minute, just when the Socialist bloc was about to crumble.
The legal dispute was ended by the court in 1997. In a Dodonean judgment, mindful of viability as well as legality, it ruled that Slovakia, now a sovereign and independent state, would not have to remove what it had built in departure from the original agreement; nor was Hungary obliged to construct on its own territory the second stage of the system stipulated in the agree-ment. Hungary had no right to cancel the 1977 agreement, but- in conformity with the new circumstances and changes in international environmental law since- it must be modified by a joint determination. The court also ruled that the two countries must also come to an agreement which respected their mutual demands. Rare as such legal conflicts in Europe are, what happened, or failed to happen, following the ruling is equally rare. Efforts were made during three government terms in Hungary to come to a new agreement along the guidelines of the Hague ruling, but there has been no progress up to this day. "Naturally", both parties continue to reiterate their earlier positions, but while the Slovakian negotiating team has been led by the same individual from the start, Budapest has started the negotiations anew, and with a newly composed delegation, following every change of government. Thus, following the elections in April this year, it may again take years for the parties to come anywhere near an agreement. This Hungarian tactic is a result of fear that any compromise would be regarded as too great a concession by those originally demonstrating against the dam, who would then call voters to the streets again, a risk no government is willing to take. The 1998 elections were actually lost by the socialist-liberal coalition partly because- before The Hague ruling- it had seemed ready to accept an agreement all too similar to the original 1977 accord. Yet, all this dragging of feet, rational in terms of political calculation, has the consequence that a spectacu-lar stretch of the Danube, an environment of exceptional beauty, will become irreversibly damaged. The first such signs have already been reported.

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The River Tisza and the European Union

In February 2000, people were in mourning along the banks of the river Tisza. They threw wreaths into Hungary's second largest river after several hundred tons of dead fish had been poisoned by a solution containing cyanide. The contamination came from the slurry deposits of an Australian-Romanian company processing the waste of a Romanian gold mine. Breaking through the poorly built dam, 100,000 cubic meters containing some 120 tons (equal to lethal doses for 2 million people) were then fed by brooks into the Tisza. The wildlife of the Tisza, according to an examination two years later, has only partially recovered from the disaster.
The European Union set up a working group which, in December 2000, established that "the refuse utilisation facility was inadequate"; the Romanian authorities made a mistake when they authorised it, in addition to which deficiencies were found in maintenance and in the construction of the dam. The Hungarian government- probably in order to avoid further damage to its fragile diplomatic relations with Bucharest- decided to sue the mixed corporation owning the gold washing plant rather than the Romanian state. The lawsuit, involving a claim for damages amounting to 28.8 billion forints, is still in process; even if successful, the Hungarian party cannot expect compensation, since the Romanian company (which has changed its name) could file for bankruptcy at any time.
Although they cannot openly say so, the plaintiff, the Hungarian state, and even the plaintiffs in the separate lawsuits launched by private injured parties- mainly in businesses and services related to catering and tourism- are privately admitting that they hope not so much for real compensation as for guarantees that no such disaster can happen again. Although there have been several pollution spills into the Tisza in Romania since, some hope is found in the fact that the European Union is imposing strict environmental requirements on Romania, which is on the eve of accession negotiations. The EU will impose more stringent rules on mining activities. This is another reason why Hungary has a strong interest in its neighbour's rapid accession to the European Union. Furthermore the great majority of Hungarian rivers originate abroad, international cooperation is therefore vital in protecting them. Because of minority problems- Romania is home to two million Hungarians- mutual relations are not exactly unproblematic, so it cannot be expected that the two countries will easily reach agreement even on global issues like environment protection. Hungary hopes that within an international framework, environmental norms will be easier to control. With Romania's accession, it will be the job of Brussels, not Budapest, to call eventual offenders to account.

 

Gábor Szabó
is on the staff of the economic weekly Heti Világgazdaság.