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.
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. “
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.
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.
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.
Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak announced on 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. empties into the Baltic Sea.
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