WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s prime minister said Friday that “huge amounts of chemical waste” were likely deliberately dumped into the Oder River, which runs along the border with Germany, causing environmental damage so severe it will take years to dispose of. river to recover.
Tons of dead fish were seen floating or dragged to the banks of the Oder River over the past two weeks, but the challenge erupted into a first scandal later this week.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, whose government is strained over its handling of what appears to be a primary environmental disaster, vowed that the Polish government will hold the perpetrators accountable.
“Huge amounts of chemical waste were probably dumped on the Oder with full awareness of the dangers and consequences,” he said in a video on Facebook. “We will let this matter pass. We will rest until the guilty are severely punished. “”
German media have reported that the poison is mercury, this has not been officially confirmed.
Research is underway into the cause of mass fish mortality. A large number of dead fish were first spotted near the town of Olawa in southwestern Poland last July, as well as dead animals such as beavers.
Przemyslaw Dhaka, head of Polish waters, the national water control authority, said on Thursday that 10 tons of dead fish had been removed from the river.
“This shows that we are dealing with a gigantic and scandalous ecological disaster,” he said at a news conference near the river where officials clashed with residents.
Meanwhile, German officials complained that Poland had not respected a foreign treaty by informing them not without delay about the possible contamination of the river. The captain of a ship first alerted the German government to the dead fish on August 9.
“We know that the planned chain of reporting for such cases has worked,” Christopher Stolzenberg, a spokesman for Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, told reporters in Berlin.
Stolzenberg said the German government was in contact with its Polish counterparts to download more information about the situation and provide the requested assistance.
Poland has deployed infantrymen to help clean up the Oder River and a fishermen’s arrangement in Zielona Gora, a town in western Poland, said Friday it is postponing fishing in the river due to pollution.
According to Morawiecki, the scale of the pollutants is so large that it would possibly take years for the river’s ecosystem to recover.
Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak announced Thursday that infantrymen and reservists were being deployed to remove pollutants from the river, known as Oder in German and Odra in Polish and Czech. it flows into the Baltic Sea.
___
Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed.
___
Follow all AP stories about climate change and environmental issues in https://apnews. com/hub/weather-and-environment.