“We’ve tried to lower the alkaline levels at several points on the Marcal with acid and gypsum. But it’s been in vain,” he said, saying the aim was to bring the alkaline levels below a pH level of 9 in the Raba and Danube rivers so as to save their ecosystems. …

“All the fish are dead and we haven’t been able to save the vegetation either,” he said.

“The entire ecosystem of the Marcal river has been destroyed, because the very high alkaline levels have killed everything,” Tibor Dobson, head of the regional disaster relief services, told the Hungarian news agency MTI.

Budapest (AFP) Oct 7, 2010 – The entire ecosystem of a small river in Hungary which is situated in the area affected by a deadly toxic mud spill, has been destroyed, a disaster relief chief said Thursday.

All water life in Hungary’s Marcal river is dead: official

Gyirmot, Hungary (AFP) Oct 7, 2010 – The stench of rotting fish mixes with an acidic smell like vinegar in the village of Gyirmot in western Hungary Thursday, where the contaminated Marcal river flows into the larger Raba.

Volunteers are collecting bucketfuls of dead fish which have been washed down the Marcal, where all life has been completely wiped out by a massive spill of toxic, blood-red sludge from an aluminium plant at Ajka, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) away.

One of the volunteers, a 69-year-old angler named Jeno Steigler, said the dead fish started arriving on Wednesday evening. So far, it appears to be mainly the smaller species of fish that are coming to the surface, he said.

“The larger ones, the carp and the pike, are probably taking longer to die and will surface further downstream,” Steigler added gloomily.

Occasionally, a man arrives in his boat with tens of kilos of fish which other men on land tip into a huge metal container where nearly 600 kilos are already rotting.

The volunteers have chosen Gyrimot in an attempt to prevent the Marcal’s contaminated fish from getting into the Raba river, which is a tributary of the mighty Danube that winds from Hungary through Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine before reaching the Black Sea. …

Gabor Figeczky, acting head of nature protection body WWF in Hungary, suggested it could take between three and five years for life to return to the Marcal. …

“There we have it. There’s nothing more. The fish are all dead. It’s only water,” sighs one man before heading desultorily home.