By Reuters Staff
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BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Flooding has sent carpets of waste plastic down river into Hungary over the past few days, officials say, despite earlier pleas to its upstream neighbours Ukraine and Romania for an end to the pollution.
As of Monday, floating garbage disposal units have removed 500 cubic metres of waste from the Tisza and Szamos rivers, Gabriella Siklos, a spokeswoman at the Hungarian Water Authority said.
Plastic bottles are streaming in on the Tisza from Ukraine, where it rises, and on the Szamos river that flows from Romania, said Gabor Molnar, an engineer at the authority, adding that colleagues up river were counting them as they entered Hungary.
President Áder Contacts Romanian Counterpart Over River Pollution
President János Áder sent a letter to Klaus Iohannis, his Romanian counterpart, on Friday, calling on him to take steps over the latter country’s repeated pollution of Hungarian rivers.
In his letter, Áder noted that the Hungarian section of the river Szamos had recently been polluted by heavy metals from unused mines in northern Romania. Áder asked his counterpart to promote his country’s meeting obligations under bilateral and international environmental agreements.
Hungarian authorities were alerted to the pollution of the Szamos on Thursday. Áder said in his letter that concentrations of zinc, copper and cadmium were still “above acceptable levels”. It is not yet known what impact the current pollution will have on water quality and the flora and fauna of the river, Áder said, but he added that “what we are facing is the umpteenth occasion of water pollution from Romania.”
The concentration of zinc, copper, aluminium and iron has been below threshold value in water samples taken from the Szamos River at the Romanian border.
Flooding has sent carpets of waste plastic down river into Hungary over the past few days, officials say, despite earlier pleas to its upstream neighbours Ukraine and Romania for an end to the pollution.