 In 2000, Hungarian locals mourned the death by throwing flowers into the tizer. The tradition is usually done when someone drowns in the water, however it is the river itself that is being mourned. The poisoning of the waters would be known as one of the worst environmental disasters in Europe, second only to Chernobyl. Cyanide invokes a feeling of fear as the dangerous chemical compound is maybe most known as a poison used to take a person's life. However it has many other uses, especially in industrial settings and today's subject is about one of these uses and that is the mining of gold. Today we're looking at the Bayer Mare cyanide spill and it's as nightmarish as you imagine, thus I'm rating it here on the plainly difficult disaster scale. Bayer Mare is a small city in Mara Marech county which lies in Romania's northwestern border with Ukraine and Hungary. The region has had a long history of mining operations and this tradition was still happening in the late 90s with gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, manganese and salt operations. Towards the late 90s a company named Ural SA had been finishing up acquiring all the licenses needed to operate. This seven-year process completed in 1999 and that meant that the part Australian Esmeralda exploration limited, part Romanian government owned planting in Bayer Mare could start operations. The plant was designed to process around 2.5 million tons of tailings per year to reclaim around 1.6 tons of gold and 9 tons of silver. The contract for the new company was greatly received as it planned to clean up the polluting waste ponds that littered the region. Three large ponds were immediately near Bayer Marech. On top of that around 200 new jobs would be created, much needed in an area with high unemployment. Part of the cleanup was to reprocess waste extract from previous precious metals mining and then store it in a new safer pond. Cyanide was the chemical choice for the separation operations allowing Ural to get as much of the precious materials out of the waste as possible. The waste sludge tailings once obtained from nearby Old Meda Pond was separated in a ball mill before undergoing two successive steps of cyanide leaching and carbon leaching. The residue water plus leachates were then pumped into a pipeline to the new pond. The pond was a modern plastic line 96 hectare capacity sedimentation basin, surrounded by an interior dike and a smaller exterior dike. Between the two dikes a canal was dug to collect any effluent which may still contain cyanide. Anything collected in this area was sent back to be reprocessed. However the design of the canal did not allow for any substantial leaks caused by a dike failing or significant overtopping. To increase capacity the interior dike was raised as more tailings were stored. The total project was predicted to run between 15 to 20 years however Ural hoped to lengthen this with more local contracts for reprocessing other wastes. During January 2000 around 70 centimetres of snow fell on Biomery. Very nice for that part of the year however this raised the water level at the Ural pond, rising it by around 36 litres per metre squared. The operator didn't do any type of preventative work to remove the extra liquid. The higher level would tip the balance into the disaster zone after heavy rainfall towards the end of January. Ural was working within Romanian law and government permits. The plants and ponds were categorised as regular risk and did not require any emergency planning or monitoring to detect dangerous situations. At 10pm on the 30th of January 2000 a piece of dike 25 metres long by 2.5 metres wide broke away from the interior dike. The flowing materials topped over the canal between the two dikes and broke past the exterior structure releasing into the Sasa River. The contamination then flowed into the Lapis River before joining the Soms River which crosses the border with Hungary. From Soms the effluent reached the Taiza River, a tributary to the Danube. Remember this for later. Faced with a torrent of cyanide and heavy metal contaminated water, Ural attempted to stop the flow with sediments from other ponds. At 11pm Ural stopped the operations of its plant and informed the local and national government of Romania. The attempt was somewhat successful by 1.30am on the 31st of January. However before the disaster would be over some 287,000 cubic meters of effluent containing 115 tonnes of cyanide and heavy metals would be released into the water course. After the partial stemming of the breach, Ural did control discharge of around 50 litres per second, mixing it with sodium hydrochlorate to neutralise the cyanide, although this, if ingested, can be a carcinogen. Authorities in Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Ukraine were informed of the spillage. Unfortunately, in a breakdown of communication, the local EPA and Romanian waters authority weren't informed by Ural for nearly 10 hours post-event, leading to many ingesting contaminated waters. Later locals would report headaches and sickness, likely caused by the delay in communication. On 2 February at 1.30am the leak was stopped as the breach was finally filled, although strengthening works would carry on for the best part of the week. Dead fish started to appear in the water nearby, hinting at the beginning of an ecological disaster. This would not be the end as the contamination continued to flow downstream. The cyanide concentration was around 19mg a litre in the Lapis River. By 4 February the cyanide had reached the tizer at a concentration of 2mg a litre. By the time it reached the Danube, over 800km of waterways had been affected with measurements at 0.2mg a litre. On the 18th, some 2,000km downstream from the failed dyke, cyanide was still traceable at 0.05mg a litre. The cyanide had reached 5 countries, affecting fishing, irrigation and drinking water, leading to temporary prohibitions. In anticipation of water supply issues, the Hungarian government gave out bottled water to the affected areas. The local ecosystem and food chain were all bit killed off by the cyanide and the addition of bleach, with some 1,241 tons of fish found dead in the Hungarian section of the tizer. The reason for the high number of fish deaths is because they are around 1,000 times more sensitive to cyanide than humans. In addition to the fish, thousands of animals were found dead from the contaminated water. The victims list included swans, gulls, pheasants, pigeons, foxes, dogs, cats, rabbits, horses, otters, deer, hawks, osprey and ducks. Pretty much anything that would have drunk the water or eaten anything in the food chain. Regardless of the contamination, both cyanide and bleach aren't great for living a long life. The nearby village of Byzanta Mary's water source was from shallow wells within the catchment area of the Oral tailings pond. On the 10th of February, the village's well had over 80 times the safe limit for cyanide. On the 26th of February, cyanide levels fell, but concentrations of cadmium, copper, manganese and iron were higher than admissible in Romanian law. Initially, Esmeralda's chairman, Brett Montgomery, claimed the disaster had been grossly exaggerated, and bizarrely claimed the death toll of the fish in the region was due to a lack of oxygen due to ice on the rivers. It would take another two years before the ecosystems affected by the spill would begin to recover, however, fish catches were recorded at only a fifth of pre-disaster levels. The plant was pressed back into operation in May 2000. New management selected in September 2001, installed a cyanide effluent treatment plant, along with a 250,000 cubic meter stormwater basin designed to handle overflow. However, another spill would blight the area again just a few weeks later when a dike burst in Bia Borsa, releasing some 2,000 cubic meters of zinc, lead and copper contaminated effluent. It would take over 10 years for the ecosystem to fully bounce back, long after all stopped operating the site in 2006. The site would subsequently be taken over by a company owned by Polyus Gold, the largest gold producer in Russia. The Romanian parliament tried to ban gold cyanidation several times, however, this has yet to win and the use of the chemical still happens today. The disaster has been described as Europe's second Chernobyl, in terms of environmental effects, with drinking water of over 2.5 million people contaminated. I won't say either way on that one, but maybe let's see what the comments section thinks. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you'd like to support the channel financially, you can on Patreon from $1 per creation, and that gets you early access to videos and access to votes. I have a YouTube membership as well from 99p per month and that gets you early access to videos. Check me out on Twitter and also if you'd like to wear my merch you can purchase it at my Teespring store. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching.