Notable case, Baia Mare, Maramureș, Romania
Baia Mare (Aurul cyanide spill)
On 30 January 2000 the wall of a gold-tailings pond at Baia Mare gave way: about 100,000 m³ of cyanide-bearing water reached the Someș, the Tisza and the Danube, crossing Romania, Hungary and Serbia.
At a glance
- Status
- Under assessment
- People affected
- 2,000,000 (2000)1
- Media
- surface water, sediment, living organisms
- Kind of site
- mining, accident
- People affected. People in Hungary whose drinking water was affected ('more than 2 million' according to WISE; Wikipedia gives 2.5 million).
Contaminants
Status
Under assessment
The Aurul plant resumed work on 13 June 2000 with the Romanian government's approval. We found no up-to-date source on the present state of the tailings ponds.
Story
Aurul S.A. recovered gold and silver from old mine tailings by cyanide leaching. The company was 50% owned by Australia's Esmeralda Exploration and 44.8% by Romania's REMIN. On 30 January 2000, after heavy rain and snowmelt, the settling pond overflowed and its wall breached.
About 100,000 m³ of liquid and suspended tailings escaped; the UNEP/OCHA mission estimated 50 to 100 tonnes of cyanide, along with copper and other metals. The plume went from the Lăpuș stream into the Someș, then the Tisza and the Danube. In Hungary drinking-water intake was interrupted for more than two million people and large quantities of fish died.
Five weeks later, at Baia Borșa, another dam failed and 20,000 m³ of water carrying zinc, lead and copper again reached the Tisza. Hungary claimed 179 million US dollars from Esmeralda. The accident fed into the 2003 Protocol on Civil Liability for transboundary industrial accidents.
Timeline
- 200030 January: the wall of the Aurul pond fails.
- 200023 February – 6 March: UNEP/OCHA assessment mission in Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia.
- 200013 June: the plant restarts.
- 2003The Protocol on Civil Liability for transboundary industrial accidents is signed.
From the literature
Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.
Plants
- Agrostis capillarisCommon bentEvidence: field
- Festuca rubraRed fescueEvidence: field
- Populus albaWhite poplarEvidence: field
- Arabidopsis halleriHaller's rockcressEvidence: field
- Cannabis sativaIndustrial hempEvidence: field
- Helianthus annuusSunflowerEvidence: field
Fungi
- Rhizophagus irregularisEvidence: greenhouse
- Aspergillus nigerBlack mouldEvidence: laboratory
- Suillus luteusSlippery jackEvidence: laboratory
- Agaricus bisporusButton mushroomEvidence: laboratory
- Fomitopsis pinicolaRed-belted conkEvidence: laboratory
- Funneliformis mosseaeEvidence: laboratory
The rest are on the contaminant pages.
Nearby
Sources
- The Aurul S.A. tailings dam failure (Baia Mare, Romania), WISE Uranium Project
- Spill of liquid and suspended waste at the Aurul S.A. retreatment plant in Baia Mare: UNEP/OCHA assessment mission (catalogue record, read via search extract), UNEP / OCHA, 2000
- 2000 Baia Mare cyanide spill, Wikipedia, 2026
Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.