Toxic disaster company must compensate victims in Hungary

A Budapest court ordered the operator of an industrial plant on Tuesday to pay compensation over Hungary’s worst environmental disaster when a huge flood of toxic sludge killed 10 people in 2010.

Channel News Asia said, the Hungarian Aluminium Production and Trade Company (MAL) has to pay 32 million forints (108,000 euros, $145,000) to a family who lost a child and whose two other children suffered severe burns.

The ruling by the Metropolitan Tribunal in Budapest is the first in 23 compensation cases involving MAL, which was judged responsible in 2011 for the spill.

According to Channel News Asia, a holding reservoir at MAL’s Ajka plant in western Hungary burst its walls on October 4, 2010, sending 1.1 million cubic metres of poisonous, stinking mud oozing into surrounding area. Some 150 people were injured, hundreds more were left homeless and had their livelihoods destroyed. It also wiped out almost all life in rivers and streams in the immediate vicinity and spread to the Danube river.

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Photo: alfahir.hu

Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/