# Thirty centimetres of cyanide

Baia Mare, 30 January – 28 February 2000. Text edition of
https://mariuscomper.uk/cianura-de-la-baia-mare/en/

## The night of the dam

At ten in the evening on 30 January 2000, a worker on the Aurul site saw
water crossing the crest of the tailings dam. At eleven, the company
reported "incidents". The dam had washed away along about 25 metres, down
to 2.5 metres deep. About 100,000 cubic metres of cyanide water reached
the Lăpuș river. In the pond: 60–70 cm of snow, 30 litres/m² of
precipitation, temperatures above freezing. The leak was stopped on
2 February at 1:30 a.m. Source: UNEP/OCHA report, 2000.

## The plume, town by town

- 30 Jan, Baia Mare: the breach; in the pond ≈400 mg/L total cyanide.
- 1 Feb, 6 p.m., Csenger (border): copper 18 mg/L (180× the limit).
- 2 Feb, Satu Mare: first dead fish.
- 7 Feb, Tiszafüred: 3.4 mg/L.
- 8 Feb, 10 p.m., Szolnok: 2.3 mg/L; waterworks stopped.
- 10 Feb, Csongrád: 2.9 mg/L; Mindszent, 8 p.m.: 2.0 mg/L.
- 11 Feb, 8 a.m., Szeged: 1.7 mg/L; Tiszasziget, midnight: 1.49 mg/L.
- Night of 11/12 Feb: the plume enters Yugoslavia.
- 13 Feb, dawn: the plume leaves Hungary.
- 26–28 Feb, Danube Delta (Cheatal-Izmail): 0.058 mg/L.

Plume speed: 2.1–2.9 km/h. Total distance affected: about 2,000 km.

## The dead rivers

Phytoplankton and zooplankton fell to zero as the plume passed. Over 1,000
tons of dead fish (Hungarian estimate, via the UN); over 1,400 tons
(Greenpeace). "The biggest environmental catastrophe since Chernobyl" —
Zoltan Illes, head of the Hungarian parliament's environment committee, to
the Associated Press, February 2000.

## The trials

Tătar v. Romania, application 67021/01: European Court of Human Rights,
27 January 2009 — violation of Article 8, no damages.

## Sources

UNEP/OCHA report (March 2000), Baia Mare International Task Force report,
Hungarian Tisza monitoring, Vreme (19 Feb 2000), Associated Press
(Feb 2000), Greenpeace (5-year account).