Minister of the Environment, Waters and Forestry Mircea Fechet declared on Saturday during a working visit to the flood-ravaged salt mine town of Praid - Harghita County, that concerns persist regarding the alarming rise in chloride concentrations in both the Corund and Tarnava Mica watercourses, as well as in the Tarnava Mare and Mures rivers, and that the Hungarian authorities have been notified of this situation, as the quite significant impact is expected to spill over the Romanian border. 'There's a peak concentration now in Blaj, in a few hours it will reach Alba Iulia,' Fechet said in a press statement.

The minister of the Environment stressed that he will also go to Tarnaveni, which sits on the Tarnava Mica river, downstream of Praid, to discuss with the authorities as the situation faced by approximately 40,000 people who were left without potable water supply via pipeline cannot continue for much longer.

Fechet said that in the Corund watercourse the salinity is 1,400 mg per liter, while in the Tarnava Mica river it stands at 1,700 mg per liter, which is ten times the management capacity of the treatment plants.

'A normal treatment plant operates properly up to 250 mg. Above 250 mg of chlorides per liter, the treatment capacity is already greatly reduced or fully hampered, which instantly results in the declaration of the public water supply as unfit for drinking. There are at least three alternatives on the table that I will discuss with the authorities today. The first would be the possibility to desalinate the water courses. The second would consist of drilling emergency deep wells to compensate for the lack of a water source in the locality. And the third is to have an intake from the Mures river, which could be transformed into a main or secondary water source for such situations when the water supply from the Tarnava Mica is impossible,' explained Mircea Fechet.

He mentioned that significant volumes of water are being evacuated from three reservoirs managed by the Romanian Waters National Administration in order to ensure dilution and to mitigate the downstream impact.

Asked how long the situation will last, with tens of thousands of people left with no access to drinking water, Fechet mentioned that if the weather is favorable and the installation of corrugated pipes for the temporary diversion of the Corund stream is successful, this could help prevent such problems in the future, yet he stressed that this is just a temporary solution and that in the long-run, a water build-up is needed upstream and the Corund must be completely diverted - which is a highly complex endeavor that will take a long time.

'In other words, the situation here is far from being considered sorted out in any way, it will take years until we can say that, no matter the amount of rainfall and no matter what the flow of the Corund stream is, (...) the area is 100% safe,' the Environment minister said.

He added that the first signs of fish mortality have appeared, with 'entire schools of fish gathered at the edge of the watercourse, a situation that obviously puts local biodiversity at risk.'

Referring to the interventions being carried out in Praid to appease the environmental impact and address the problems faced by the downstream communities, Mircea Fechet announced the setting into operation of high-capacity pumps to transport the Corund waterflow via hoses past the critical area.

Fechet stated that he participated in a presentation made by experts from the 'Babes-Bolyai' University in Cluj on the latest developments in the mining perimeter, which showed that the surface of the flood-caused internal erosion has greatly expanded, foreshadowing a serious risk of collapses.

'Collapses come with an implicit hydrological risk, because any caving in triggers a water wave at least equal to the volume displaced by the collapsed ceiling, which could endanger the households located in the vicinity of the mine. But then, we are also discussing the geological risk of a potential collapse, that of a possible landslide, and I was briefly presented the conclusions of some German experts in such events, in connection with which we continue to monitor the situation very carefully,' Fechet said.

He also indicated that he was briefed on the first results generated by the installed microseismic sensors, which are to send data related to an immediate danger.

'The safety of the people and of the workers remains paramount and what I am trying to get across is that the Romanian state, by all possible means, is making significant efforts to return things to normal to the highest extent possible, 'the Environment minister concluded. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Gina Stefan; EN - writing by: Simona Klodnischi)