Budapest, 15 sep (EFE).-the Hungarian environmental authorities fined with about 470 million euros to the evil company, held responsible for the dumping of toxic mud last October, which caused ten deaths, reported today the press local.
According to the Economic Journal napi.hu, the supervisory Office of environment and local waters fined 135,000 forintos (EUR 468 million) million to the company for “environmental damage in the course of storage of red mud”.
On October 4, 2010 a rupture of the retaining wall of a raft of sludge in Ajka, southwest of Budapest, produced a spillage of toxic substances, which ended it poisoned several smaller rivers and threatened to pour into the Danube arsenic and heavy metals.
Ten people were killed and other 125 injured following the ecological disaster that also damaged high economic of some 200 million euros.
In addition, the toxic mud flooded an area of 40 square kilometres of farmland, as well as the streets of cities like Kolontár and Devecser, where hundreds of people ran out of home.
The lawyer of the company, György subspecies, said today the company will use sentence, since it considers that the fine absolutely “Fundamentals”.
Depending on subspecies, the sentence is talking about 1.8 million tons of mud spill, red but which in reality were only 350,000 tons.
In any case, the company can not afford the high economic sanction, revenues in 2010 were just 26 million euros, by what subspecies believed that the penalty is “a disguised nationalization”.
Since that happened the catastrophe, in October, until today more than 60 judgements against the signature evil, producer of aluminium, have been open by individuals seeking compensation for the damage suffered.
A possible closure of the company, which employs about 6,000 people in the region, would cause serious social problems, according to sources from the sector.
For its part, the Government of conservative Viktor Orban, said today that “will do everything to save the company,” according to a report by the Ministry of Rural development.
So far have not clarified the causes of the rupture of the retaining wall of the raft, containing waste resulting from the production of aluminum. EFE
