May 10, 1999 (Environmental News Service (ENS)) - Although not on the agenda as European Union environment ministers gathered in Weimar for their informal meeting this weekend, the Kosovo conflict topped the bill in German environment minister Joergen Trittin's post-meeting press conference. Several delegations, and especially Greece, had expressed concern over the environmental implications of NATO's bombing campaign. The ministers "felt that we should take precautions so that all damage can be put right again as soon as possible," said Trittin. "We are sure that environmental damage will not be limited to the territory of Yugoslavia," he went on, but would also affect the Danube and the Black Sea. The minister stressed that making any statement about the environmental implications of the war was hampered by a severe lack of hard information. Scientists and environmental groups across the Balkans and the Swiss-based Worldwide Fund for Nature have expressed deep concern over the ecological effects of the NATO bombing.
June 4, 1999 (ENS) - The Romanian government is trying to calm public apprehension over the spread of toxic substances due to NATO bombing strikes on bordering Yugoslavia. There is growing public concern over possible pollution due to NATO strikes on industrial Yugoslav manufacturing plants, such as the April 15 destruction of the Pancevo petrochemical plant near Belgrade, and the Prahovo oil terminal which was hit on May 15. The Ministry of Waters, Forests and Environmental Protection (MWFEP) report says the main environmental problems caused by the Yugoslav war are heavy metal concentrations in the Danube River water, and acid rains in Romania's southwestern counties Timis and Caras-Severin.
Routine and special water analyses have indicated concentrations over the maximum permitted levels of heavy metals such as copper, chrome, cadmium, lead and zinc in several Danube River areas, such as the Portile de Fier Romanian-Yugoslav dam. A peak level of 55 times the maximum admitted level of zinc was determined on April 23. Phenol concentrations over the maximum admitted level have also been determined. While no fish mortality has yet been reported, environmental damage due to the persistence of heavy metals and other pollutants may occur in the future, says the report. No radioactive pollution has been reported, despite a series of dramatic alarm signals received from Yugoslav and international sources regarding the use of depleted uranium missiles by NATO. According to Petrica Sandru, vice-president of the Romanian Society for Radioprotection, the "only serious danger of radioactive pollution could come from an accidental bombing of the Bulgarian nuclear power plant of Kozloduy," south of the Romanian border. The Bulgarian capital, Sofia, has been already hit accidentally by NATO missiles. The Romanian MWFEP has made consistent efforts from the beginning of the NATO strikes on Yugoslavia to monitor the environment. According to Romica Tomescu, minister of MWFEP, "this effort already cost the Romanian authorities over US$500,000." Monitoring equipment from several Environmental Protection Agencies, laboratories, and petrochemical plants has been displaced to areas bordering Yugoslavia. The MWFEP has decided to stop paying its dues to several international conventions, hoping to save money in this way, and use it for the monitoring program.
Philip Weller, Director of the Danube-Carpathian Program of WWF International says stopping payment of dues is a "bad signal about Romania's commitment to support international conventions." The request could be interpreted as an attempt on Romania's part to "use the situation to obtain advantages," he warns.
While agreeing that some pollutants, such as mercury, cannot be monitored with existing equipment, Weller thinks that a more realistic figure for the most urgent equipment needs would be US$200,000. WWF has already identified ways to finance the Romanian monitoring program, through grants from the United Nations Environment Program and the Austrian government.
The WWF called last month for an international environmental protection and recovery plan for the Balkans. The plan could be implemented under the Danube River Protection Convention, and would "support existing civil defense preparations for spill detection and clean-up capacities in Bulgaria and Romania."
June 9, 1999 (ENS) Anxiety has been widespread amongst scientists, environmentalists and the general public over the possibility of a major radioactive release if a bomb strikes the Vinca Institute. The Vinca reactor has not been in operation for more than 15 years, but a significant amount of enriched 235-uranium and unused fuel is still in a spent fuel pool in the reactor's interior. Highly radioactive material for "everyday activities" is also located in several research laboratories, according to P.R. Adzic at the Vinca Institute.
Now it appears that an agreement is concluded for Serb troop withdrawal from Kosovo that could suspend the bombing. If so, the threat of a Vinca hit would be lifted. Everyone in Belgrade and the entire Balkan region is relieved that so far, NATO bombs have not struck Vinca.
Two major problems have been identified during the IAEA fact-finding missions. The first problem involves a large fraction of the spent fuel sealed in drums that may be over-pressurized by the evolution of corrosion gases. This problem requires "immediate attention" the IAEA said in a February 1997 publication. The second problem involves the remainder of the fuel, some of it already leaking, in corroding stainless steel tubes. This problem "should be mitigated as soon as possible," the IAEA said.
July 13, 1999 (ENS) - Environmental devastation in the Balkans in the wake of the 77 day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia that ended June 10 is now being addressed in a practical manner by a newly formed task force made up of United Nations agency personnel. The new task force will leave for Belgrade on July 18. The Balkans Task Force on Environment and Human Settlements is made up of staff members from the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and the UN Center for Human Settlements, commonly known as Habitat. The Joint UNEP/OCHA Environment Unit, UNEP's Chemicals Program and the Regional Office for Europe are also involved. OCHA is the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The Balkans Task Force was established on May 5 by Dr. Klaus Toepfer, UNEP's executive director, in order to monitor the environmental and human settlements impacts of the ongoing Balkans conflict.
It was agreed that UNEP be involved in the areas of the establishment of an "environmental administration" in the framework of general civil administration and environmental education and training, said Haavisto.
An earlier United Nations inter-agency mission to the region recommended that UNEP, together with Habitat and UN Development Program carry out a detailed assessment of the environmental situation with the aim of identifying specific needs for targeted assistance.
This recommendation was echoed by European Union Environment Ministers at the Council meeting on the Environment in Luxembourg June 23 and 24. Welcoming the efforts of UNEP/Habitat, the ministers said it is now necessary to immediately start obtaining reliable and verifiable information for assessing the type and extent of environmental consequences of the conflict. Addressing the environmental damage and preventing further damage is an integral part of the reconstruction efforts, the EU Council stressed.
July 23, 1999 (ENS) - It could take ten years and billions of dollars worth of aid to restore the war-torn Balkan region, international leaders estimate. James Wolfensohn [President of the World Bank] said, "We have a responsibility to help them, especially the children, to mend their broken lives." In Tirana, Albania July 19, Wolfensohn and Prime Minister Pandeli Majko signed legal agreements for the financing of three projects including a US$24 million irrigation and drainage project.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a speech to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe July 20, that failure by the international community to help restore water supplies and other essential services in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia now could result in an exodus of Serbs. He predicted that it will take at least 10 years to complete reconstruction under the so-called new Marshall Plan, or stability pact, for the Balkans.
A mission of the Austrian Federal Environment Agency led by UNEP/INFOTERRA National Focal Point representative Johannes Mayer was in Sofia from July 12 to 20 to check at a more informal expert level data on the environmental impact of the conflict. Their preliminary conclusions on air pollution reflected data from the air pollution modeling working group of National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The measurements of polluting substances in the air such as hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, methane and phenol in the border area and around Sofia and from Romania along the Danube River during this period "remain within the usual variations of industrial air pollution with domestic and transboundary origin," the Bulgarian scientists report.
On land, the Austrian mission reported in their preliminary conclusions that during the period of military activities, no acute damages to the living environment on the Danube river were established, but in some cases heavy metals were detected in vegetation and fish. "Systematic monitoring should continue, especially since it can be supposed that considerable and mainly unknown chemical pollution is being held back still for some time by the barrages of the Iron Gate area," the Austrians reported.
On the Danube River, the Austrian mission reported that starting from unusual large oil spills on the Danube in January 1999, the Bulgarian authorities had begun well before the start of the military activities to build up a national emergency system for fast detection, analysis and data transmission in case of emergency pollution situations. "During the period of the military activities, the increased activities for monitoring the water quality along the Bulgarian stretch of the Danube river have not shown unusual increases or exceedances of current norms for the measured basic parameters," the Austrian report stated.
British and French forces continue to ensure the collection of solid waste in Pristina and Mitrovica respectively, but there continue to be a number of other towns whose needs are not being addressed.
July 23, 1999 BBC News - Published at 16:53 GMT 17:53 UK
The experts are working for the Balkans Task Force (BTF), a joint initiative of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Center for Human Settlements (Habitat). The task force is chaired by a former environment minister of Finland, Pekka Haavisto, who has said the aim is to produce "a neutral and scientifically credible report on the situation". International experts invited by the United Nations to assess the environmental damage caused by the Balkan war have arrived in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad. The team has already visited the Pancevo industrial complex, 15 km from Belgrade, which was heavily bombed. The town contains an oil refinery, a fertilizer factory and a chemical plant. A raid in April hit storage tanks which released large amounts of vinyl chloride monomers (VCMs) into the air.
July 29, 1999 (ENS) - A United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) task force has failed to find major environmental damage from NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia after a 10-day preliminary analysis of industrial sites. Balkans Task Force leader Pekka Haavisto, a former Finnish environment minister, said on Tuesday that there is "no major eco-catastrophe," though local problems are severe in some areas.
Haavisto gave a similar assessment of the war's environmental impacts when he briefed European Union environment ministers on the issue at last week's informal meeting hosted by the Finnish presidency. One of the biggest obstacles faced by the task force is the poor knowledge of pre-existing pollution around sites such as the Pancevo industrial complex near Belgrade, Haavisto said. Trying to determine between old and new pollution was a "highly political issue," he concluded, although he stressed that the group had received full cooperation from all parties involved.
The Balkans Task Force assessment is considerably less pessimistic than one released June 28 by the Hungary based NGO the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC). The REC report concludes the war in Yugoslavia "may have far-reaching impacts on the ability of the Balkan countries to protect the valuable environment of the South Eastern European region, and only a long-term approach to reclamation, monitoring and institutional rebuilding will help prevent a potentially disastrous situation."
Among the more pressing environmental problems, the REC report
listed:
August 18 - (c) Earth Times News Service A UN task force has found traces of mercury, asbestos and other toxic and hazardous substances in the soil and water of sections of Yugoslavia that were targeted by NATO bombers. Haavisto, former Environment Minister of Finland, said the findings of the task force are still being analyzed, with a complete report to be issued in September. Haavisto said the task force completed extensive sampling of the soil, air and ground water at the Pancevo industrial complex (fertilizer plant, petrochemical factory, and oil refinery), Novi-Sad oil refinery, the Zastava car factory in Kragujevac, Nis (transformer factory) and Bor (copper factory) in Serbia and fuel depots in Krajlevo and Prahava—all in Serbia—and Pristina, Kosovo.
When asked how it will take to clean up the pollutants, Haavisto said the cleanup would take a long time, especially with the on-site polluted soil and protection of the ground water. As for concerns about radiation from depleted-uranium shells fired by the NATO warplanes, Haavisto said the task force had not detected high levels of radioactivity, but that the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had been contacted.
An earlier survey, sponsored by the European Commission and carried out by the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), found that pollution is "very severe" in the vicinity of some industrial complexes bombed by NATO and that many valuable ecosystems have been disturbed. The REC report, released at the end of June, said that water in the area has been contaminated with PCBs, spilled oil, ammonia and heavy metals, and the air shows signs of radioactive pollution. It also notes that lack of sewage treatment in Albanian refugee camps has led to discharges of sewage into water channels.
August 27 © (ENS) This, the third Balkans Task Force mission to the region, is one part of an independent scientific and technical assessment of the environmental and human settlement impact of the Balkans conflict. The current mission is organized in cooperation with the Vienna-based International Commission on the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR). Balkans Task Force scientists from the Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Germany, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Sweden visited potential pollution "hot-spots" up and down stream of the Novi-Sad oil refinery, Pancevo industrial complex and a tributary near the Zastava car factory in Kragujevac. From July 18 to 27, a Balkans Task Force team of international experts visited the Former Republic of Yugoslavia to assess the environmental damage caused by the conflict at selected industrial sites.
A second Balkans Task Force team, based in the Kosovo capital of Pristina, is currently working in close cooperation with the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) on issues of urban management and rehabilitation, housing law, property registration and environmental management. A fourth Balkans Task Force mission will begin work next month on an assessment of impacts on the region’s biological diversity.
Finally, an inter-agency group involving UNEP, WHO, IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency) and the Swedish Radiation Institute began work on August 3 to look into the issue of depleted uranium. Depleted uranium anti-tank shells were used in the Kosovo conflict.
This group, working from Geneva under the Balkans Task Force umbrella, is collecting and collating information on depleted uranium from a variety of sources and a decision will be taken in earlier September on future Balkans Task Force activity in this area.
The Balkans Task Force was established by the head of UNEP and Habitat, UN Under-Secretary-General, Klaus Toepfer, in May 1999 to assess the environmental and human settlements impacts of the Balkans conflict.
Sept. 13 - © 1999 Associated Press. U.N.: No Yugoslav eco-catastrophe. Instead, action urged for several ‘hotspots’ left by NATO. The 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia left the country with environmental "hotspots" but no ecological catastrophes, a United Nations team of experts concluded Monday. Urgent action is needed to deal with pollution at certain locations, said the team’s chief, Pekka Haavisto. The team announced some of its findings after completing its third and final investigative mission on the effects of the alliance’s air strikes here. "The towns of Pancevo and Kragujevac are two hotspots of particular concern," Haavisto told reporters. Both towns were repeatedly pounded by NATO. Pancevo’s petrochemical plant and oil refinery were leveled in the process, as were the industrial complex and factories in Kragujevac, in central Serbia. Also urgently in need of cleaning is a one-mile stretch of a heavily polluted canal that feeds into the Danube River, Haavisto said. Water and sediment there have become heavily polluted with mercury, dioxin and petrochemical waste. "If the Danube level significantly rises in the fall, the waters will flow with all these pollutants into the river," Haavisto said.
The experts also looked into rumors that NATO had used bombs containing uranium, a radioactive agent. Samples from the targeted locations are now undergoing laboratory analysis. The team did not disclose estimates on the environmental damage’s economic impact. But Haavisto said any cleanup actions would be extremely costly. The team’s preliminary findings will be submitted to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in early October.
Sept. 14, 1999 BBC News Published on the Internet at 15:24 GMT 16:24 UK
Danube pollution warning. The World Wide Fund for Nature says drinking water supplies in parts of Yugoslavia and neighboring countries are at risk in the aftermath of the Balkan war. WWF sent a six-strong team to Yugoslavia for three days at the end of July. It concentrated on the Pancevo chemical complex near Belgrade, and on the Novi Sad oil refinery. Installations at Pancevo include a fertilizer plant, a vinyl chloride manufacturing plant, and an oil refinery. WWF said its team found "an enormous deficiency in the monitoring of toxic chemicals in the countries of central and Eastern Europe. The pollution monitoring program for the Danube has been particularly weak". It said this made it difficult to distinguish contamination caused by the war from previous or continuing pollution. Pollution spreading. "However, it's clear that the immediate clean-up and stopping of the current pollution coming from Pancevo and Novi Sad are vital." The WWF team found evidence that toxic pollutants released close to places hit by the NATO bombing were now spreading into surrounding areas. Pancevo burns after a raid. It concluded that there was considerable atmospheric pollution, probably affecting the environment and public health. Soil and water samples it took "showed the presence of notable quantities of mercury, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), ethylene dichloride (EDC), and other highly toxic substances, including dioxins". WWF says the contaminants are now "threatening groundwater drinking supplies and natural resources in several countries of the area". Mercury accumulates in the food chain, and can be carried long distances in air and water. WWF says the mercury in soil samples taken at Pancevo was 2.5 times above the level that would trigger action if found in a country like the Netherlands. Exceeding safety levels. The US Environmental Protection Agency says PAHs are highly carcinogenic. WWF found water in a canal at Pancevo containing PAHs 15 times above the EPA limit for drinking water. Soil samples from Pancevo contained PAHs 10 to 11 times higher than Dutch action levels, while at Novi Sad they were twice as high. EDC is a highly persistent and toxic pollutant which can affect the human reproductive, nervous and immune systems. Still too early to find all the answers. WWF says hydrocarbons, which it found in soil at Pancevo to amount to more than 25% of soil content, are also a problem. "One drop of oil is sufficient to contaminate one cubic meter of drinking water, making it undrinkable." Pekka Haavisto, the chairman of the United Nations Balkan Task Force, said UN experts had found environmental "hot-spots" at Pancevo and Kragujevac, an industrial town in central Serbia. Disaster not likely. He said both needed urgent action, and there was a possibility that rising water levels could push mercury, dioxins and petrochemical waste in the canal there into the Danube. But he played down talk of an ecological catastrophe. "We didn't find any alarming things in regards to the water-taking issues." Mr Haavisto said the war's long-term impact on the region's biodiversity was likely to be "minimal", adding that he was more concerned about the presence in national parks of unexploded weapons. The UN is still investigating the possible consequences of the use of depleted uranium weapons in the war, testing "soil and material samples" it had taken. But there was no word of its possible effects on people. "We have not been able to do that kind of work at all."
October 14, 1999 BBC Balkans environment 'seriously damaged'
A United Nations task force which has been investigating the aftermath
of the Balkan war says it found four environmental hot spots in Serbia.
But the task force, a joint operation by the UN's Environment Programme
and its Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), says the conflict did not
cause an environmental catastrophe for the whole Balkan region.
The report of the Balkan Task Force (BTF) says the pollution found at the four hot spots is serious enough to pose "a threat to human health". However, it says much of the pollution dates from before the war, and it found "widespread evidence of long-term deficiencies in the treatment of hazardous waste".
The task force concentrated its work on five areas:
Environmental
Security Study
Millennium
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