Danube

The Treaty of Versailles (1919), concluding World War I, confirmed the European commission, and set up another one to control the Danube above the delta. During World War II the commissions were abolished by Nazi Germany (see National Socialism), which controlled the entire river from 1940 to 1944. After the war the Communist-bloc nations bordering the river formed a new Danube Commission, with headquarters at Budapest. Austria was admitted in 1960 and West Germany in 1963. At present, the Commission consists of representatives of 11 countries. In 1991 the Danube delta was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The construction of the Gabčíkovo Dam on the Danube in southern Slovakia, begun in the 1980s, changed the river’s course, resulting in increased political tension between Hungary and Slovakia in the early 1990s. By late 1992, Czechoslovakia had used giant boulders and concrete blocks to divert most of the Danube’s water into a 24-km (15-mi) artificial channel to feed Gabčíkovo’s hydroelectric turbines.

The dam project was originally a joint effort between the Czechoslovak, Hungarian, and Austrian governments. However, due to political pressure from environmental and other groups, Hungary and Austria withdrew from the project, followed by the Czech Republic after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993. Slovakia unilaterally completed the dam’s construction, despite vociferous protests from the Hungarian government, which demanded that the international boundary between the two countries be redrawn to reflect the Danube’s northward shift because the international border had followed the Danube’s main waterway since 1947.

The environmental concerns are serious. Near the dam the Danube receives less than one third of its former average flow. The Hungarian government claims that wells in nearby villages have dried up and that water available for irrigation contains high concentrations of toxins, resulting from inadequate dilution in the waterway.

There are also fears that the dam is drying up the Szigetkoz flood plain, once one of Europe’s largest freshwater wetlands. In response, Slovakia has contended that Hungary unilaterally abrogated treaty obligations and should pay Slovakia financial damages. The dispute was submitted to the International Court of Justice for arbitration in March 1997. The court ruled that both countries had violated the original hydroelectric project agreement and ordered them to compensate one another and continue negotiations.

The NATO bombing campaign in Serbia, from March to June 1999, had a significant detrimental impact on the Danube. Various bridges across the river were destroyed, blocking river traffic. The cost of this to shipping has been estimated at several hundred million US dollars. Leaks from chemical plants, refineries, and other industrial sites targeted by NATO bombs are thought to have raised levels of toxic substances in the Danube and other rivers in Serbia to potentially dangerous levels. In November 2001 the river was declared safe for navigation and the clean-up operation was completed in mid-2003.

In February 2000 the waters of the river were contaminated by a cyanide spill (see Hydrogen Cyanide) from an Australian-owned gold mine in Romania. The toxic chemical made its way into the Danube in Hungary, via a tributary, the river Tisza. The spill poisoned drinking water in Hungary and Serbia and left parts of the Danube River ecosystem barren of life.