The Danube River and its tributaries run from France to the Black Sea.

No one is doing anything to stop the poisons from entering the general water quality of the entire region?  You've got to be joking?  Europe is looking at generations of contaminated water on a planet that is drying up?  Really?

Hungary toxic sludge reaches Danube branch (click title to entry - thank you)

Caustic red mud spill that killed four people has reached Mosoni-Danube, branch of Europe's second longest river 

Mark Tran and agencies 

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 11.03 BST 

A toxic red mud spill that killed four people in western Hungary has reached the Mosoni-Danube, a southern branch of the Danube, Hungarian disaster officials said today.
Tibor Dobson of Hungary's national disaster unit told Reuters the spill reached the branch of Europe's second-longest river near Hungary's border with Slovakia and Austria this morning.
But Dobson said the highly caustic slurry has been reduced to the point where it is unlikely to cause further damage to the environment. The pH level of the sludge, originally above 12, is now under 10, he said. However, a harmless level is between 6 and 8.
There are fears that the toxic torrent will cause serious ecological damage to the Danube after being carried downstream by tributaries. The sludge is expected to reach the river by the weekend or early next week.
Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban, who visited one of three villages inundated by red sludge, today declared one area a write-off....

This should be a wake call for every government on Earth.  If they think they have problems with clean water now, imagine not having local waters supplies at all.

Is that Alcoa smelting plant still in Iceland?  We have more aluminum cans in recycle than Carter has little liver pills, what do we need an aluminum smelting plant for?

Saturday, August 14, 2004

Sunday, Aug. 08, 2004  (click here) In the remote and barren highlands of eastern Iceland, the herds of reindeer and flocks of pink-footed geese suddenly have some company. Hundreds of workmen have moved into the unspoiled valleys northeast of the Vatnajökull icecap, where glacial rivers flow through magnificent canyons in a starkly beautiful volcanic landscape. The men are working on the Kárahnjúkar Hydroelectric Project: a vast network of dams, reservoirs, tunnels, power stations and high-tension lines to support a new aluminum-smelting plant for the U.S. multinational Alcoa on a fjord some 70 km to the east. At a total projected cost of $2.2 billion for the smelter and its hydropower system, it's the biggest construction project in Iceland's history — and it's taking shape in one of Europe's last remaining large wilderness areas. Little wonder that it has sparked a furious debate over whether economic growth can co-exist with environmental care in this place that few people ever visit.

Alcoa primary aluminum smelters  (click here)

Alcoa has 25 smelting plants globally.  If the global community continues to allow this mess to continue to be propagated we'll never use recycled aluminum.  Is anyone thinking about this?  We don't need any more and some of these can be shut down.  Put people to work recycling the aluminum we already have.  It's sort of like sunshine, you only need so much before it causes cancer.

...The first was the so-called "hidden people"--(click here) or, to put it more plainly, elves--in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, "we couldn't as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people." The other, more serious problem was the Icelandic male: he took more safety risks than aluminum workers in other nations did. "In manufacturing," says the spokesman, "you want people who follow the rules and fall in line. You don't want them to be heroes. You don't want them to try to fix something it's not their job to fix, because they might blow up the place." The Icelandic male had a propensity to try to fix something it wasn't his job to fix....

I just love the fascination with anthropology by Wall Street, don't you?