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Ten tons of dead fish have surfaced from waterways in what one official called an “ecological disaster” and Poland has deployed soldiers to help clean up the Oder River on the border with Germany.
A fishermen’s association in the western Polish city of Zielona Gora said on Friday it would suspend fishing in the river amid unconfirmed reports in German media that the river may be contaminated with mercury.
An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the mass die-off of fish. In late July, large numbers of dead fish, along with beavers and other animals, were first spotted near the small town of Orava in southwestern Poland.
“We are probably dealing with the crime of introducing a substance into the water that kills fish and other creatures.
This is currently being verified,” said Jáček Ozdoba, Poland’s Deputy Minister of Climate and Environment.
Poland’s political opposition and local residents have accused Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s government of being too slow in responding to the problem.
Przemyslaw Dhaka, head of Polish waters at the state water agency, said on Thursday that 10 tonnes of dead fish had been removed from the river.
“It shows that we are dealing with a huge and heinous ecological disaster,” he said at a news conference by the river, where officials faced angry local residents.
The environmental department in the southwestern city of Wroclaw had earlier informed local prosecutors that the country’s second-longest river appeared to have been poisoned.
Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak announced Thursday that regular soldiers and reservists will be deployed to help remove pollutants from the river, known as the Oder in Germany and the Odra in Poland and the Czech Republic.
It flows hundreds of miles north from the Czech Oder Mountains and eventually into the Baltic Sea.
German officials complained that Poland failed to comply with international treaties by not immediately notifying them of the potential pollution of the river.
On August 9, a captain first notified German authorities of the dead fish in the river.
“We know that the reporting chain envisaged for such cases has not worked,” said Christopher Stolzenberg, a spokesman for Germany’s federal environment ministry.
“We finally got information yesterday that was supposed to come from Poland,” he told reporters in Berlin.
“But in fact, the contamination on the German side was known by then.” Stolzenberg said German authorities were contacting their Polish counterparts to get more information on the situation, including what was found in the water, and Provide any help needed.
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