Thứ Tư, 13 tháng 10, 2010

Gates Spotlights Maritime Security in Hanoi Forum
By John D. Banusiewicz
American Forces Press Service
HANOI, Vietnam, Oct. 12, 2010 – Disagreements over territorial claims and the appropriate use of the maritime domain pose a challenge to stability and prosperity in Southeast Asia, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told a group of regional defense ministers meeting here today.
Gates is one of eight defense leaders from nonmember nations invited to participate in the first “plus” defense ministers meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The 10-member association includes Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, Cambodia and Brunei.
In his remarks at the conference, Gates urged a peaceful resolution of territorial disputes that have beset the region, most notably in the South China Sea.
“The United States does not take sides on competing territorial claims, such as those in the South China Sea,” Gates said. “Competing claims should be settled peacefully, without force or coercion, through collaborative diplomatic processes, and in keeping with customary international law.”
The secretary applauded initial steps by nations with competing claims in the South China Sea to discuss development of a full and binding code of conduct on the matter, and he said the United States stands ready to help in facilitating such initiatives.
“We have a national interest in freedom of navigation, in unimpeded economic development and commerce, and in respect for international law,” he said. “We also believe that customary international law, as reflected in the [United Nations] Convention on the Law of the Sea, provides clear guidance on the appropriate use of the maritime domain, and rights of access to it. By adhering to this guidance, we can ensure that all share equal and open access to international waterways.”
Gates noted that the United States always has exercised its rights and supported the rights of others to transit through and operate in international waters. “This will not change,” he said, “nor will our commitment to engage in exercises and activities together with our allies and partners.”
Those activities, Gates said, are a routine and critical component of demonstrating the U.S. commitment to maintain peace and stability and promote freedom of navigation in the region.
“They are also essential to building habits of strong security cooperation,” he said, “which is necessary as we move forward to address common security challenges together.”

Thứ Ba, 12 tháng 10, 2010

Thảm họa bùn đỏ tại Hungary



http://www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/pictures/2010/10/101009_hungary_sludge_gallery.shtml
Thủ tướng Hungary, Viktor Orban, mô tả vụ tràn bùn đỏ độc hại
là một "thảm họa sinh thái nghiêm trọng" khi tới thăm khu làng bị thiệt hại là Kolontar vào hôm thứ Năm 7/10.
Khoảng 600 đến 700 ngàn mét khối bùn đỏ đã bị tràn ra khỏi nhà máy nhôm, cách thủ đô Budapest chừng 160km, và ảnh hưởng một khu vực rộng chừng 40km vuông.
Giới chức Hungary nói sẽ phải mất hàng chục triệu dollar và ít nhất một năm mới có thể dọn dẹp những thiệt hại do vụ tràn bùn đỏ công nghiệp độc hại gây ra.

thứ năm, 7 tháng 10, 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/av/2010/10/101007_hungary_pm_sludge.shtml

Chuyên gia châu Âu giúp xử lý bùn đỏ

Tường của hồ chứa thứ hai đã bị nứt
Người ta đang chạy đua với thời gian để xây một hàng rào bảo vệ chống đợt vỡ thứ hai
Các chuyên gia từ Liên hiệp châu Âu bắt đầu làm việc tại Hungary để xử lý với vụ tràn bùn đỏ bauxite, vốn đã làm cho bảy người thiệt mạng và phá hủy nhiều vùng rộng lớn.
Đơn vị bảo vệ thường dân của EU sẽ hành động nhằm khôi phục các khu vực bị phá hủy và đánh giá thêm các rủi ro.
Quan ngại chính hiện nay là làm thế nào để giảm bớt tác động của một vụ vỡ hồ chứa tiếp theo, vốn là điều mà các quan chức cho là không thể tránh khỏi.
Người ta đang vội vã xây một tường thành bảo vệ bằng đất đá nhằm đối phó với đợt tràn bùn tiếp theo.
Ngoài 7 người thiệt mạng, còn có 150 người bị thương sau khi 700 ngàn mét khối bùn đỏ bauxite tràn ra từ hồ chứa gần Ajka ở phía tây Hungary hôm 4/10.
Lo ngại
Phóng viên BBC, Nick Thorpe, tại Ajka nói Hungary đã đề nghị cụ thể phải có sự giúp đỡ của các chuyên gia châu Âu, sau khi nước này vật lộn để đánh giá các hậu quả về môi trường và y tế của bùn đỏ đang tràn ra khu vực rộng chừng 40km vuông, trong đó có một số thị trấn và làng mạc.
Bùn đỏ là dư chất của nhiều năm sản xuất oxit nhôm.
Bùn này có hàm lượng alkaline và kim loại nặng rất cao. Phóng viên BBC nhận định nhiệm vụ đầu tiên của các chuyên gia quốc tế là đánh giá mức độ nguy hiểm đối với nguồn nước, đất đai và cả không khí khi bùn khô lại.
Một quan chức Hungary nói đợt vỡ hồ chứa thứ hai là điều 'không thể tránh khỏi'
Đơn vị bảo vệ thường dân sau đó sẽ tìm cách khôi phục môi trường tự nhiên tại những khu vực bị phá hủy và tìm cách ngăn ngừa thêm những đe dọa có thể xảy ra.
Mối quan ngại chính hiện nay là chuyện vỡ hồ chứa chất thải thứ hai.
Bộ trưởng về Môi trường Zoltan Illes nói hôm Chủ Nhật rằng khả năng vỡ hồ chứa là điều không thể tránh khỏi.
Người ta đang hi vọng rằng hàng rào bảo vệ xây bằng đất đá, dài 600m, dày 30m, được xây dựng ngay bên dưới hồ chứa này, sẽ giúp ngăn chặn đợt tràn bùn tiếp theo.
Nói chuyện tại hiện trường, ông Illes nhận xét: “Việc vỡ hồ chứa có thể xảy ra ngay bây giờ, ngày mai, hay ngày kia, ai mà biết được?”
Chỉ về phía điểm nứt, ông nói khi tường thành của hồ chứa vỡ thì nó có thể làm tràn ra từ “năm đến bảy triệu tấn bùn đỏ”.
Người phát ngôn của Thủ tướng Hungary, Viktor Orban, nói với đài truyền hình địa phương hôm thứ Hai là các quan chức hi vọng bức tường chắn khẩn cấp sẽ được hoàn thành vào thứ Ba.
Ông này cho biết: “Chúng tôi có 4000 người với 300 máy đang làm việc hết công suất để ngăn ngừa thảm kịch tiếp theo.”
Phóng viên BBC cho biết các quan chức đang hi vọng trời sẽ không mưa, vì nếu mưa thì bùn đỏ sẽ chứa nhiều nước hơn và khiến cho việc kiểm soát khó khăn hơn.

Thứ Năm, 7 tháng 10, 2010

Hungary spill reaches Raba river, not yet Danube

  • Rescue workers clear up toxic sludge in the flooded village of Devecser Reuters – Rescue workers clear up toxic sludge in the flooded village of Devecser, 150 km (93 miles) west of Budapest, …
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – A toxic red sludge spill from an alumina plant in western Hungary has reached the Raba river on Thursday but not yet the Danube, a major European waterway, the spokesman for Hungary's disaster agency said on Thursday.
Tibor Dobson said crews were battling to reduce the spill's alkaline content, which was still at around pH 9 -- above the normal, harmless level of between 6 and 8 -- when it reached the Raba at 0330 GMT (12:30 a.m. EDT on Thursday). The Raba flows into the Danube.
Dobson said the spill had killed fish in the Marcal river first hit by the pollution, which poured out of a containment reservoir of an alumina plant on Monday.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Hungary – Red sludge flowed into the Danube River on Thursday

KOLONTAR, Hungary – Red sludge flowed into the Danube River on Thursday, threatening a half-dozen nations along one of Europe's key waterways. Monitors took samples every few hour to measure damage from the toxic spill and emergency officials declared one Hungarian tributary dead.
As cleanup crews gathered deer carcasses and other wildlife from the villages in southwestern Hungary flooded by the industrial waste, environmental groups warned of long-term damage to the farming region's topsoil.
Conflicting information swirled about the dangers posed by the ankle-deep muck coating the most seriously hit areas after the collapse of a waste-storage reservoir at a nearby alumina plant Monday.
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences maintained that while the material was a continued hazard, its heavy metal concentrations were not considered dangerous to the environment.
"The academy can say whatever it wants," fumed Barbara Szalai Szita, who lives in Devecser, one of the hardest-hit villages. "All I know is that if I spend 30 minutes outside I get a foul taste in my mouth and my tongue feels strange."
Hungary's environment minister, Zoltan Illes, said the henna-colored sludge covering a 16-square-mile swathe of countryside does have "a high content of heavy metals," some of which can cause cancer. He warned of possible environmental hazards, particularly if it were to enter the groundwater system.
With rain giving way to dry, warmer weather over the past two days, the caustic mud is increasingly turning to airborne dust, which can cause respiratory problems, Illes added.
"If that would dry out then ... wind can blow ... that heavy metal contamination through the respiratory system," he said.
Amid the conflicting reports, officials had one piece of encouraging news: The mighty Danube was apparently absorbing the slurry with little immediate harm beyond sporadic sightings of dead fish.
The red sludge, a waste product of aluminum production, reached the western branch of the Danube early Thursday and was flowing into its broad main stretch by noon. By evening, it was moving southward toward Serbia and Romania.
At monitoring stations in Croatia, Serbia and Romania, officials were taking river samples every few hours, though experts hoped the river's huge water volume would blunt the impact of the spill.
Hungarian rescue agency spokesman Tibor Dobson said the pH content of the sludge entering the Danube had been reduced to the point where it was unlikely to cause further environmental damage. The waste, which had tested at a highly alkaline pH level of 13 soon after the spill — similar to lye or bleach — was under 10 by Thursday.
A neutral pH level for water is 7, with normal readings ranging from 6.5 to 8.5. Each pH number is 10 times the previous level, so a pH of 13 is 1,000 times more alkaline than a pH of 10.
The tributaries feeding the Danube from the area around the spill were not so fortunate. The Marcal River, stained ochre and devoid of fish and other aquatic life, was declared a dead zone.
"Life in the Marcal River has been extinguished," Dobson said of the waterway, which is fed by streams around the accident site and carried the waste into the Raba River, which then flows into the Danube.
He said emergency crews were pouring plaster and acetic acid — vinegar — into the area where the Raba and Danube meet to lower the sludge's pH value.
"The main effort is now being concentrated on the Raba and the Danube," he said. "That's what has to be saved."
An AP television crew watching cleanup efforts at the confluence of the Raba and the Danube said neither river showed visible signs of pollution.
An environmental group that monitors threats to the Danube said the breached reservoir was on a 2006 watch list of some 100 industrial sites that were at risk for accidents that could contaminate the 1,775-mile-long river. The International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River coordinates conservation efforts in the nations bordering the waterway and its tributaries.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban, visiting the village of Kolontar, where homes and fields were coated with sludge, described the reservoir break as a disaster unprecedented in Hungary.
"If this had happened at night then everyone here would have died," he told the MTI news agency. "This is so irresponsible that it is impossible to find words."
Soldiers, emergency workers and volunteers dressed in mud-splattered protective gear kept shoveling out the muck Thursday, a process officials said could take months.
The long-term effects on the agricultural region were devastating, officials said. Some 2,000 acres of topsoil will have to be dug up and replaced because the highly alkaline sludge had killed off all the nutrients and organisms needed to keep the soil healthy, according to Illes, the environment minister.
It is still not known what caused a section of the reservoir to collapse, unleashing a torrent of some 35 million cubic feet (1 million cubic meters) of sludge that killed at least four people and left three missing. More than 150 people were treated for burns and other injuries, and 11 remained in serious condition Thursday.
However, meteorologists at AccuWeather.com suggested unusually high precipitation might have been a factor, saying spring and summer rainfall in areas of central Europe from Poland to southern Hungary was more than 200 percent above normal.
The walls holding back the sludge may have been weakened by the rain, contributing to the breach that released the spill, the agency said.
MAL Rt., the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, which owns the Ajkai Timfoldgyar plant where the spill occurred, has rejected criticism it should have taken more precautions at the reservoir.
However, Hungary's National Investigation Office, which is investigating the spill, said it planned to look into whether on-the-job carelessness was a factor.
The huge reservoir, more than 1,000 feet (300 meters) long and 1,500 feet (450 meters) wide, was no longer leaking by Thursday and a triple-tiered protective wall was being built around its damaged section. Guards were posted to give an early warning in case of any new emergency.
That did not calm the fears of villagers who lived through the disaster, many of whom said they planned to leave.
Etel Stampf was in her backyard when the first waves of the flood hit her home in Kolontar. She climbed on the roof of her pigsty to survive, but the flooding was so high that one of her legs was badly burned as it dangled in the caustic water.
"If I don't die now, I never will," the 76-year-old woman recalled thinking as she clung to the fragile structure.
"We worked so hard for years to have something for ourselves and now it's all gone," Stampf said. "I don't want to stay here. Ten years from now there will be nothing left of this town."
___
Associated Press writers Pablo Gorondi in Budapest and Alison Mutler in Bucharest, Romania, contributed to this report.

Hungary opens criminal probe into sludge disaster

Hungary opens criminal probe into sludge disaster
People salvage their belongings from their house flooded by toxic red mud in Kolontar, 167 kms southwest of Budapest, Hungary, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010. AP

Hungary opens criminal probe into sludge disaster

2 days ago at 18:53 | Associated Press
KOLONTAR, Hungary (AP) — Hungary's top investigative agency opened a criminal probe into the toxic sludge flood Wednesday while the European Union and environmental groups warned the disaster could spread down the Danube and have long-term consequences for half a dozen nations.

Hundreds of people had to be evacuated after a gigantic sludge reservoir burst Monday at a metals plant in Ajka, a town 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Budapest, the capital.

At least four people were killed, three are still missing and 120 were injured as the unstoppable torrent inundated homes, swept cars off roads, damaged bridges and disgorged an estimated 1 million cubic meters (35 million cubic feet) of toxic waste onto several nearby towns.

It was still not known Wednesday why part of the reservoir failed. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said authorities were caught off guard by the disaster since the plant and reservoir had been inspected only two weeks earlier and no irregularities had been found.

Police spokeswoman Monika Benyi told The Associated Press that the decision by National Police Chief Jozsef Hatala to take over the probe reflected the importance and the complexity of the sludge disaster. She said a criminal case had been opened into possible on-the-job carelessness.

The huge reservoir was no longer leaking Wednesday but a triple-tiered protective wall was being built around the reservoir's damaged area. Interior Minister Sandor Pinter said guards have been posted at the site ready to give early warning in case of any new emergency.

The European Union said it feared the toxic flood could turn into an ecological disaster for several nations along the mighty Danube and said it stood ready to offer help if Hungarian authorities needed it.

"This is a serious environmental problem," EU spokesman Joe Hennon told the AP in Brussels. "We are concerned, not just for the environment in Hungary, but this could potentially cross borders."

South of Hungary, the Danube flows through Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Moldova before emptying into the Black Sea.

Greenpeace was even more emphatic.

The sludge spill is "one of the top three environmental disasters in Europe in the last 20 or 30 years," said Herwit Schuster, a spokesman for Greenpeace International.

Greenpeace workers took sludge samples on Tuesday and were having them tested in labs in Vienna and Budapest to find out how contaminated the sludge is by heavy metals.

"It is clear that 40 sq. kilometers (15.5 square miles) of mostly agricultural land is polluted and destroyed for a long time," Schuster said. "If there are substances like arsenic and mercury, that would affect river systems and ground water on long-term basis."

Emergency workers were pouring 1,000 tons of plaster into the nearby Marcal River to try to bind the sludge and keep it from flowing into the Danube, 45 miles (72 kilometers) away. Pinter said engineers considered diverting the Marcal into nearby fields but decided not to, fearing the damage from the diversion would not outweigh the benefits.
Workers were extracting sludge from the river and using plaster and acid to neutralize the toxic chemicals. Initial pH measurements showed the Marcal was at an extremely alkaline value of 13 after the spill, Pinter said.

Emergency workers and construction crews in hazmat gear swept through the hardest-hit Hungarian towns Wednesday, straining to clear roads and homes coated by thick red sludge and caustic muddy water.

In Kolontar, the town nearest to the plant, a military construction crew assembled a pontoon bridge across a toxic stream so residents could briefly return to their homes and rescue belongings.

But Kolontar mayor Karoly Tily said he cannot give a "reassuring answer" to residents, who fear a repeat of Monday's calamity.

The International Commission for the Protection of the Danube, which manages the river, agreed that sludge spill could certainly trigger long-term damaging effects for wildlife in and along the river.

"It is a very serious accident and has potential implications for other countries," Philip Weller, the executive secretary, said from Brussels.

The Danube, at 1,775 miles (2,850 kilometers) long, is Europe's second largest river and holds one of the continent's greatest treasuries of wildlife. The river has already been the focus of a multibillion dollar post-communist cleanup, but high-risk industries such as Hungary's Ajkai Timfoldgyar alumina plant, where the disaster occurred, are still producing waste near some of its tributaries.

Weller said the commission's early warning alarm system was triggered by the spill, which means factories and towns along the Danube may have to shut down their water intake systems from the river. The Vienna-based commission was waiting for further details of the spill from Hungarian authorities, he said.

He said large fish in the Danube could ingest the metals and then transfer them to humans who eat the fish.

The ecological catastrophe has already left a trail of shattered lives in its wake.

There was no stopping the avalanche of toxic red sludge when it rammed into Kati Holtzer's home in Kolontar: It smashed through the main door and trapped the woman and her 3-year-old boy in a churning sea of acrid waste.

She saved her son by placing him on a sofa that was floating in the muck. She then called her husband Balazs, who was working in Austria, to say goodbye.

"We're going to die," she told him, chest-deep in sludge.

After the terror came the pain: Holtzer and her two rescuers were among those suffering from biting chemical burns. Half the house was painted red from the sludge.

Worst of all, her fox terrier Mazli — "Luck" in Hungarian — lay dead in the yard Wednesday, still chained to a stake.

Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/world/detail/85271/#ixzz11ieqIbVv