The Tarnaveni water treatment plant was shut down again last night after salt levels in the Tarnava Mica river surged over 3,000 mg/l, affecting four administrative-territorial units - Tarnaveni, Adamus, Bagaciu and Ganesti, the director of water management company Aquaserv Mures, Sipos Levente told a press conference on Tuesday.
"We are currently trying to operate within certain time windows, depending on how the salinity allows us," he said, adding that the saltwater upsurge under monitoring 10 kilometers upstream peaked at 3,995 mg/l in the locality of Deaj. Experts hope that sometime tomorrow evening they will be able to restart the Tarnaveni facility, although for not too long - perhaps for a maximum of two days, because yesterday's events at the source in Praid indicate that a wave of even higher salinity is rolling in and will last for about 6 - 7 hours, said the director of Aquaserv Mures.
During the interruption of the pipeline water supply, the Emergency Management Inspectorate and Aquaserv will continue to distribute drinking water and household water at the established local points.
The director of the Mures Water Management System Ovidiu Ianculescu said that the Corund stream is being pumped to bypass the risky area and almost no longer flows through the canyon, but that the works carried out in Praid have triggered a new salty wave that has spread along the watercourse.
"Yesterday, the builder managed to get past the area with the highest risk. Immediately after that, we recorded a conductivity upsurge on the Corund stream, it 'exploded' from 7,000 ľS/cm in the morning to 130,000. Overnight, it stabilized somewhere around 50 - 60,000 ľS/cm, depending on the collapses that occurred inside the old salt mines, the values oscillated up to 90,000," Ianculescu said, adding that the situation is highly volatile and saline surges must be further expected.
The Chief Commissioner of the Environmental Guard - Mures County Commissariat said that the institution has been permanently monitoring the area of the Tarnava Mica river, especially upstream of the town of Sangeorgiu de Padure, and found that large amounts of dead fish are laying on the bottom of the riverbed, with the officials expecting fish die-offs to be to the tune of tons.
Comentează