From the The International Herald Tribune come a post about the terrible state of the Danube.
In a vast, shallow pit 100 meters from the Sava River lie millions of tons of contaminated coal ash, the waste product of the hulking Nikola Tesla Coal Power Plant, which produces half of this country’s electricity.Surrounded by wildflowers and scrubby forests – and situated about 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, southwest of the point where the Sava empties into the Danube – the ash pit is a gargantuan receptacle of materials dangerous to human health: heavy metals, arsenic, sulphates, iron oxide, to name a few. A series of tall, spindly water sprinklers dot the silent, eerie field, which stretches over 200 hectares, or 500 acres. Their aim: to keep the toxic ash damp, making it less likely to blow out of the pit’s confines.
…A number of cities still pour untreated or partly treated human waste into the river, including Belgrade, the Serbian capital, which has no sewage treatment at all. Sturgeons, once plentiful in the Black Sea and in the Danube, are nearly extinct because damming projects in Serbia blocked access to their breeding grounds.MORE
