1 OCT 2001
BUDAPEST — Yellowing bandages cover 78-year-old Istvan Varga’s swollen calves, and his joints ache. He blames a boarded-up factory nearby for his ill-health.
“There are many of us here who suffer because of that,” he said, snorting in disgust at the 20-hectare (50-acre) industrial site he and his neighbours Say contaminated the soil and air in Budapest’s southwestern suburbs for much of the last century.
Varga and more than 1,000 other local residents sued the former Metalloglobus battery disposal factory nearly 10 years ago, claiming it was responsible for tainting 200,000 square metres (2.15 ane square feet) of nearby land with lead, copper and other heavy metals that leaked deep into the soil.
The cancer rate in the capital’s 22nd District, where Varga lives, is officially three times the national average.
While there is little dispute about the contamination from the plant — one of a number of environmental eyesores in Hungary — some are questioning how Hungary succeeded in completing environment negotiations with the European Union, which it hopes to join by 2004.
“This environmental ‘chapter’ was pure politics. It’s so disappointing,” said Zoltan Illes, a member of the ruling centre-right coalition and head of the government’s environmental committee.
“In 12 seconds, the EU could come in here and prove we are not ready for membership. Rather, our membership will be decided on defence, finance and market conditions, not the environment.”
As part of the long EU accession process, applicant states negotiate with Brussels on how to adopt existing EU rules and standards.
Hungary closed the environment chapter in June under the EU’s Swedish presidency. Illes said such harmonisation was no more than paper-pushing.
“The Swedes wanted a success story,” he said. “In reality nothing has changed.”
Who’s to Blame?
While Hungary is among the leading candidates to join the European Union, it remains blighted by the environmental legacy of half a century of communism, when large state-owned factories spewed out filth with scant regard for the environment.
An estimated 70 percent of raw sewage from Budapest is dumped untreated into the Danube. Only 50 of around 3,000 landfills nationwide meet EU standards.
In one southern town, near the famed Villany wine region, 62,000 barrels of toxic sludge have sat leaking for decades, no money available for proper disposal despite a 1995 government decree recommending immediate action.
“Negotiations (with the EU) were about business and the internal marketplace, not the environment,” said Nandor Vass, Hungary’s chief environmental negotiator to the European Union.
But he said he hoped Hungary was embarking on a more environment-friendly path by forcing companies, factories and industrial sites to reduce air emissions, dispose of waste properly and recycle under EU guidelines.
The European Union has granted 103 million euros ($91.39 million) so far to help Hungary clean up. The amount is matched by the Hungarian government.
But Vass. warned Hungary actually needs 3.5 trillion forints ($12.32 billion) to fully meet EU environmental mandates.
Years of Waste
‘Much of the pollution in Hungary and throughout Central Europe is a result of decades of intensive state-run industrial production with no environmental safeguards, analysts said. “Nobody cared about environmental protection and back then there were no limits or standards,” Illes said.
In its environmental negotiations with Brussels, Hungary was granted more time to improve its record on waste packaging, urban waste water and reducing factory emissions bringing incinerators up to code.
“We’ve got at least 10 years to come up to compliance with our landfills and waste water,” said Gyula Bandi of Pazmany Peter University. “We have time and the EU knows it takes time “
But, he added, the environment does not appear to be a top priority for the government arch fica elections next year.
Citing the passage of a new waste water management act a year ago, Bandi said: “It cannot even be used yet because no one ever wrote any guidelines for permit granting and regulation. It’s still on the drafting board.”
Hungary has also seen three environment ministers in the past year and a half.
The sackings began following the Tisza river cyanide disaster in early 2000, when 100,000 cubic metres (3.5 million cubic feet) of cyanide-tainted water overflowed from a dam in Romania, poisoning fish and wildlife downstream in Hungary.
Slow Progress
Some 40 buildings fan out across 20 hectares (50 acres) of land at the deserted Metalloglobus factory. Weeds have grown between slabs of concrete, windows are broken and black ash is caked thick near a row of chimneys that once operated around the clock.
The factory was shut down in 1990 for work safety reasons, said Jozsef Papp, Metalloglobus’s technical director.
Built in the early 1900s, the plant dismantled and disposed of battery acids and scrap metal. In the process, parts were bumed, with smoke and ash pumped out through the chimneys.
There has been no attempt at a clean-up, and the local residents’ 20 billion forint ($70.4 million) lawsuit, filed in 1993, languishes in a district court. “Metalloglobus is a very typical problem in former communist countries,” Vass said. “It’s a very big problem, too, how to finance this clean-up.”
Papp said the company wants to seal off the contaminated area in a kind of concrete block, rather than excavating and replacing the soil. He reckons this could cost between five and 10 billion forints. Meanwhile, the Varga family and their neighbours wait for answers. Varga and his wife, Ildiko, 72, drink only bottled water. They have lost five dogs to cancer. And no one will buy their home. “We’ve lost too many people to this pollution, but in my lifetime I know I wont see anything change,” he said.