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The Șesei valley, Apuseni Mountains, Romania · 1975–2025

The mine waste that buried a village church. Watch it rise, year by year, from space

Since 1978, according to the company, the Roșia Poieni copper mine has been pumping its waste into the valley where the village of Geamăna stood. 48 satellite photographs, one a year, and two radar surveys of the terrain show the valley filling up. By 2013 the waste had reached the church roof.

This is the valley today. Scroll to go back to 1975.

The year-by-year photographs are further down, under every photograph.

1975-08-16 · Landsat 2

The valley, before

This is the valley of the Șesei, a stream that runs into the Arieș river, photographed by Landsat 2. At 60 metres a pixel the houses are invisible; the forest, the hay meadows and the tracks are not.

In 1941 the village of Geamăna, with all its hamlets, had 1,326 people. From 1956 the hamlets were counted as separate villages. By 1977 Geamăna itself had 45 people, and about 720 with its former hamlets.

1978

The waste had to go somewhere

Roșia Poieni holds more than a billion tonnes of ore at 0.36% copper: about 60% of Romania's copper reserves, according to the state-owned company that runs it, Cupru Min. The copper is separated by flotation, and almost everything else, ground rock mixed with water, is tailings.

The place chosen for them was the Șesei valley. The pond "came into operation at the end of 1978", the company writes. Emil Roșca, from Pârâu Cărbunari, a former hamlet of Geamăna, recalled the compensation in 2019: "There were three categories: the poor, the better-off and the well-off."

Sources: Cupru Min, Alba24, 2020, G4Media, 2019 (in Romanian)

1988

The grey stain

By 1988 the tailings show from space as a pale stain behind the dam. The warmer-tinted area is what the photographs show covered in the year on screen.

Families left one by one, for little money. The sources disagree on how many: more than 300 families expropriated in the early 1980s, the daily Adevărul wrote in 2014; 400, Alba24 wrote in 2021; 480 after 1982, Adevărul wrote in 2023. Those whose houses stood above the village centre were allowed to stay.

February 2000 · Space Shuttle Endeavour

The valley gets its relief

Between 11 and 22 February 2000 the Space Shuttle Endeavour measured, by radar, the height of about 80% of Earth's land, between 60° N and 56° S. From here on we have heights as well as photographs.

The village church stood on a knoll, about a hundred metres from the village centre. Its base was 685 m above sea level. The tailings next to it had reached 677 m: still 8 m below.

2000 → 2013

The tailings reach the church

Scroll slowly: the years pass with the page. The tube in the corner shows the tailings against the church's base (the yellow line); the mark above it is a person's height.

The summer 2007 photograph still shows green around the church. The summer 2009 photograph shows tailings.

2013

Up to the roof

In September 2013 the magazine Historia reported that "the mud has reached the level of the roof". The TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X radar satellites, which surveyed the valley between 2011 and 2015, put the surface next to the church at 693 m, 8 m above its base: about the height of a two-storey house.

"When the church is completely covered by the tailings, the village will be dead, as I see it," Niculai Prața, a former villager, said at the time.

Sources: Historia, 2013 (in Romanian); the heights: how this was measured

2004

Why the lake changes colour

The tailings settle grey along the edges. Water collects in the lower part of the pond, and its colour changes from year to year.

The Roșia Poieni ore contains pyrite and chalcopyrite. Exposed to air and water, their oxidation turns the water acid and dissolves iron; when the iron later settles out as hydroxides, the deposits turn rust-coloured. The acid water draining off the waste dumps has a pH of 1.5 to 2.8, the company writes: about as acidic as lemon juice.

Sources: Melenti et al., Babeș-Bolyai University, 2011; Cupru Min (in Romanian)

2018

Brick red

"In 2017 the tailings pond was brick red," Sorin Vlad, head of the Alba county water authority, said in 2021. It looks that way from orbit too: on almost every summer photograph up to 2018, the pool in the western arm is reddish brown.

2021

Turquoise

From 2019 the photographs show the western pool turning yellow-green and the eastern one turquoise. In 2021 the director described the water as "blue-turquoise". He put the change down to lime: the company doses a 3–10% lime slurry into the acid water draining off its waste dumps. The pH of the water leaving the pond had been 4 in 2009 and was 7 in 2020.

Lime lowers the acidity. What happens to the metals in the tailings is a separate question: the statements about the colour change give no metal measurements.

Source: Alba24, 2021 (in Romanian)

The dam

The dam keeps growing too

The dam, built of limestone rockfill, was 70 metres high at first, with its crest at 680 m. The 2000 radar finds it at 683 m, the 2011–2015 radar at 695 m. A 2022 project raised it to 710 m, "the final elevation in the approved technical design".

In May 2026 the company applied for environmental approval to go to 712 m. In June it sought a designer for 715 m.

By 1 January 2020 some 67 million tonnes of tailings had collected here. In 2019 alone, three million tonnes arrived: about 5.8 tonnes a minute.

Sources: Alba24, May 2026; Alba pe surse, June 2026 (in Romanian)

2025-07-02

Today

On the 2025 photograph the unvegetated ground in the valley, the tailings and their pools, covers 146 hectares. At the 2011 and 2021 censuses the village of Geamăna had no inhabitants. In 2023, fewer than 15 people still lived in the scattered houses on the hills around the pond.

Aurelia Prața, who was 78 in 2023, left in 2022, when the water at the tail of the pond reached her house in Valea Holhorii, a former hamlet of Geamăna.

Source: Adevărul, 2023 (in Romanian)

Explore the valley

Pick a year and look at the valley from the angle you want.

Drag the landscape to turn it; Ctrl + wheel zooms.

How many people lived in Geamăna?

"Almost 1,000 people", wrote G4Media; "more than 1,000" in 1986, wrote Adevărul. The figure fits the village as it was before 1956, with all its hamlets: 1,088 people in 1850, 1,326 in 1941. In 1977 the village and its former hamlets had about 720. In 1956 the hamlets became villages in their own right. The village that kept the name Geamăna, the one in the valley, then had 45 people.

Population of Geamăna at each census, 1850–20211,088 people in 1850, 1,326 in 1941. From 1956 the hamlets are counted as separate villages: Geamăna is left with 45 people, then 7 in 1992, 1 in 2002 and 0 in 2011 and 2021. The dotted line adds the village and its former hamlets: 724 in 1977, 243 in 2002.03507001,0501,40018501875190019251950197520002025Geamăna with all its hamletsvillage + former hamletsGeamăna
Censuses 1850–2002 from Varga E. Árpád's compilation; 2011 and 2021 from Romania's statistics institute (INS), via Ziarul Unirea. The dotted line is the village plus its former hamlets.

For those who left, the place did not move with them. "Our grandparents and even our parents remained buried in the cemetery that now lies tens of metres under the tailings," a former villager told Adevărul in 2023. "Your homestead, you had to leave it there and take what you could carry… A whole human life was there," Emil Roșca said in 2019.

How fast are the tailings rising?

Within 1.2 km of the church, on ground already covered in 2000, the tailings surface stood at 677 m in February 2000 and at 692 m in the 2011–2015 radar survey: 15 m in about 13 years, 1.2 m a year on average. Romanian Wikipedia gives "90–100 cm" a year, unsourced. The company's figures land in the same place: the almost two million cubic metres of tailings stored in 2019, spread over 174 hectares, come to 1.1 m.

The tailings at Geamăna's church: what was measured, 2000–2026In February 2000 the tailings surface next to the church was at 677 m and the church's base at 685 m. Between 2011 and 2015 radar puts the surface at 693 m. The satellite photographs show the church's spot still green in summer 2007 and covered in summer 2009. Dam crest: 683 m in 2000, 695 m in 2011–2015, 710 m in 2022, 712 m requested in 2026.670680690700710200020052010201520202025metres above sea levelchurch's baseFeb 2000: 677 m2011–2015: 693 mtailings reach the basedam crest
Coloured points: the tailings surface next to the church measured by radar (Space Shuttle Endeavour, February 2000; TanDEM-X, 2011–2015, the band). Yellow ticks: the last summer photograph with the church on dry ground and the first with it covered. Black dotted line: the dam crest.

There is no public terrain survey of this valley after 2015, so today's height cannot be read from orbit. The dam, though, has grown by another 15 m since, and in 2019 the pond received 3.04 million tonnes.

Every photograph, year by year

48 Landsat images, one per year, chosen from those with at most 4% cloud over the pond, from 1975 to 2025. Years without a clean image are missing.

  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 1975
    1975-08-16
  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 1979
    1979-09-01
  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 1987
    1987-05-23
  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 1995
    1995-08-01
  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 2000
    2000-08-22
  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 2005
    2005-10-31
  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 2008
    2008-04-14
  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 2013
    2013-10-05
  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 2017
    2017-09-30
  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 2021
    2021-09-09
  • The Șesei valley and the tailings pond seen by Landsat in 2025
    2025-07-02

What is said wrongly about Geamăna

  • "Roșia Poieni is the largest copper deposit in Europe."FalsePoland's Kupferschiefer deposits are larger. Milu and colleagues, cited in a Babeș-Bolyai University paper, rank it second in Europe without saying by what measure. In Romania it holds about 60% of copper reserves, according to Cupru Min.
  • "The village was flooded all at once."FalseThe departures stretched over four decades: expropriations from 1978, families leaving "one by one" after 1982, a woman who left her house in 2022.
  • "There is cyanide in the pond."No evidenceThe sources on Valea Șesei describe copper flotation tailings and do not mention cyanide; the list of reagents used is not public. The cyanide story comes from Roșia Montană, the gold project nearby.
  • "The wooden church at the Astra Museum is Geamăna's."FalseThe church moved to the Astra Museum in Sibiu in 2018 came from the neighbouring village of Vința. Geamăna's stayed where it was; its tower still shows.
  • "The pond rises by a metre a year."NearlyThe figure circulates without a source. The company's data give 1.1 m in 2019; the radar, around the church, about 1.2 m a year between 2000 and 2011–2015.
  • "Turquoise water is clean water."Not shownThe head of the Alba water authority put the colour change down to neutralisation with lime. The pH rose; about the metals, the statements say nothing.

How this was measured

The photographs. For each year, the summer Landsat image with the least cloud over the pond: Landsat 2 and 3 (60 m pixels) until 1983, then Landsat 5, 7, 8 and 9, resampled to 15 m. From 1984 the colours are natural, with the same contrast for every year; before that Landsat had no blue band, so the colours are approximated.

Where the tailings are. A pixel in the valley counts as covered when it has no vegetation (an NDVI below 0.12), and the year the tailings arrived is the first from which the pixel stays covered in at least 80% of the later summer photographs. That way one hazy year or one poor photograph cannot move the boundary.

The height. The terrain is the one measured by the Space Shuttle Endeavour in February 2000 (NASADEM). The tailings surface next to the church in 2000 is the median height, within 1.2 km, of the ground the photographs show already covered. The 2011–2015 surface comes from the Copernicus GLO-30 model, based on the TanDEM-X mission, dated to the middle of its survey. Between the two, the height at the church is drawn in straight lines through the moment the tailings reached its base, halfway between the last summer photograph with the church dry and the first with it covered.

The church. The tower's position was read off an Esri aerial image, 50 m from where the Wikimedia Commons photograph of it was taken. Its base is the Shuttle-measured height of that spot.

Where the measurements stop. Before 2000 there are photographs but no heights, and nobody has measured the valley floor under the tailings from orbit; that is why the valley lies flat until 2000. The village centre and the cemetery have no published position, so they are not drawn.

Sources

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