The Bozanta Mare and Tautii de Sus tailings ponds - Maramures County are "ecological disasters" and the necessary funds for greening must be urgently allocated, chairwoman of the Chamber of Deputies' Environmental Committee Diana Buzoianu (Save Romania Union - USR) told a press conference called on Tuesday at the Palace of Parliament for the presentation of the conclusions of a fact-checking visit by members of the Environmental Committee to Baia Mare, where discussions took place with representatives of the local administration and the environmental authority, civil society, as well as experts.
Diana Buzoianu explained that the 77-hectare tailings pond at Bozanta Mare is heavily toxic, polluted with heavy metals, "poisoning the nearby communities and actually having killed thousands of Romanians". The soil there is "imbued with heavy metals", and when it rains the toxic elements contaminate the rivers, and when the weather is dry it turns into dust that plagues the communities each summer, said Buzoianu.
She added that samples taken by experts from the milk and cheese from animals raised near the pond indicate exceedances of heavy metals - lead, cadmium - by more than ten times the legal limit.
"In the last two years, the head of the Baia Mare Oncology Department raised the alarm, reporting that 30 years ago there were only 1,500 cancer cases in the hospital's records, whereas today there are over 15,000. So, the number of cancers has exploded due to the constant poisoning of the area's residents with heavy metals," said the USR representative.
The deputies' visit also included the Tautii de Sus pond, where the authorities say that ecological restoration works have been 70% completed, but RON 26 million are still needed to finalize the works. For years now, the money necessary for ecological restoration works has been cut off, the USR deputy said.
She mentioned that an industrial park and a dual education center are planned to be built in the nearby area, stressing that with heavy metals leaching into the ground and with clean-up works still a long way to go, starting the construction of the educational center and having hundreds of students learn there would be a crime.
The USR lawmaker informed that she will take all steps to ensure that this money is allocated. "It is unacceptable that so many Maramures locals have died in recent years just because the necessary money to clean up this mountain of poison was not found," stressed Buzoianu.
In his turn, USR deputy Brian Cristian cautioned that some major problems are looming over the health of the people of Maramures.
"Tailings ponds are located all over Maramures County, and the one in Bozanta Mare is the largest in the country. Basically, these are piles of tailings from mining operations, and they contain toxic substances, including crystalline silica which is directly associated with lung cancer, and the number of such cases has increased significantly in recent years. When the mines in Maramures were shut down, the state promised that the mines, the tailings ponds and tailings mounds will be properly neutralized, yet the harmful substances kept building up over time and the necessary money was never unlocked, he explained.
USR MP Allen Coliban accused the National Institute of Public Health of keeping "completely silent" on the subject, even though the issue affects people's lives.
"These are serious problems, if we think about that at a systemic level, at the level of the Romanian state, it proves the state's inability to meet Article 35 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to a clean environment for all citizens," said Coliban, who stressed the urgency of allocating the funds for greening works.
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