Bucharest, Romania - Scores of tons of crude oil that spilled from a flood-damaged pipe in southeastern Romania Thursday were threatening to pollute the river Danube, a government minister said.
"We've built, so far, six (floating) dams on the Prahova River, but unfortunately, the water has a very high speed, with a flow of 200 cubic metres (7,060 cubic feet) per second.... the operation is extremely difficult,'' Environment Minister Petru Lificiu told private television Antena 1.
However, even if it reached the Danube, the spill was only expected to affect the Romanian section of the river, a major European waterway, environment experts said.
High waters in the oil field of Ploiesti, north of Bucharest, broke a pipe at an oil well during the early hours Thursday, causing crude oil to pour into the river Prahova, heavily polluting its waters.
Lificiu said if emergency workers failed to contain the spill, the crude in the Prahova could reach the Ialomita River and, in the worst-case scenario, flow into the Danube by Saturday. The Ialomita flows into the Danube river some 110 miles west of the Black Sea on Romanian territory. Environment experts said the location meant there was little risk of cross-border pollution or crude spilling into the Black Sea.
Lificiu said several floating dams made of bags filled with highly absorbent materials had already been installed on the Ialomita.
Antena 1 showed huge patches of crude oil carried at high speed by the swollen waters of the Prahova River, with the oil gravitating toward its banks already blackened by the crude.
The heavy weather has taken its toll in Romania this week, with floods and hailstorms killing three people and damaging roads and hundreds of houses.
Two years ago a dam at a gold smelter in northwestern Romania collapsed and spilled lethal cyanide and heavy metals into the Danube, creating ecological havoc downstream to the Black Sea, in a serious incident of cross-border pollution.
(Source: Environmental News Network (ENN), August 2, 2002, www.enn.com)
