How to Clean Up Hungary's 16-Square-Mile Toxic Mess
Hungary's Toxic Mess On October 4, a breach in the wall of the waste containment reservoir at the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant in western Hungary sent a caustic flood of toxic "red mud" pouring downhill. The villages of Kolontar and Devecser were caught in the path, and the ensuing deluge of alkaline waste spread over more than 15 square miles. This image was taken by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA's Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite on October 9. NASA Earth ObservatorySo an industrial accident has blanketed your countryside in millions of cubic feet of caustic sludge. Now what? Scenes of caustic red sludge surging through pastoral Hungarian villages last week evoked a familiar blend of human pathos and righteous anger that most of us had shelved shortly after the BP well was capped. Then the news cycle turned over and our attention moved elsewhere. But as emergency workers in western...