Half a year has passed since the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that the Police Headquarters set a reward for helping identify the parties responsible for the Oder pollution. So far, the Polish government and environmental protection agencies has failed to find the perpetrators of this environmental disaster. Meanwhile, Greenpeace published a study report that named the culprits: hard coal mining companies extracting hard coal in Silesia. Consequently, Greenpeace calls on the government to donate the whole amount of the prize to the cause of the Lower Oder Valley National Park creation, and to take urgent action in order to prevent further environmental disasters, not only on the Oder, but also on the Vistula.
Today, Greenpeace published the results of water quality tests from the basins of the two largest Polish rivers – the Vistula and the Oder, into which mines discharge their sewage. Greenpeace activists teamed with scientists-chemists collected and tested water samples in Upper Silesia for their salinity. The results were terrifying. In several Oder and Vistula tributaries, water salinity is higher than that in the Baltic Sea! It was highly saline water in the Oder River that constituted a culture medium for the Prymnesium parvum species of toxic algae (the so-called golden algae), identified as the direct cause of the massive die-off of the fish in the Oder. Our Report proves clearly that the primary cause of the last year’s catastrophe, where the whole ecosystem of the Oder River was destroyed, was the activity of the mining companies in Upper Silesia, who discharge concentrated salt solutions from the hard coal mines into the Oder tributaries.
– We examined the tributaries of the Oder and the Vistula, which receive sewage from several hard coal mines. Those Upper Silesian mine waters have several times higher chloride and sulphide concentrations than what led to the disaster on the Odra river. If those brine discharges are not stopped, in summer, a new disaster may hit not only the Oder, but also the Vistula. Our studies clearly shows that the wastewater discharged by the mines into the tributaries of the Vistula is even more saline than the wastewater discharged into the tributaries of the Oder – comments Professor Leszek Pazderski, Greenpeace’s Environmental Policy Expert.
Scientists believe that the risk of another disaster will be highest in the summer, with increased temperatures and decreased water levels in the Oder. Additionally, if golden algae also reach the Vistula basin, such ecological disaster may hit Poland’s largest river as well. Mine water discharged there has the highest salinity out of all samples tested by Greenpeace. When the Vistula reaches Upper Silesia, it is a pure, mountain river, but while flowing through that region, it turns into a polluted sewer, with a 25-fold increase in salinity.
– Unfortunately, the problem of salinisation of the Polish rivers, including the Oder and the Vistula, is ignored by the governmental agencies. Publicly available values obtained by the Chief Inspectorate for Environmental Protection (GIOŚ) in Poland are consistent with the data presented in the Greenpeace Report, or even higher. Nevertheless, the GIOŚ fails to take action in order to protect Poland’s two largest rivers from an ecological disaster. This situation has been aggravated by the Ministry of Climate and Environment, who helps the mining companies circumvent the law on a massive scale. The majority of hard coal mines operate without the environmental impact evaluations, which are required by the law. This means that the effect of coal mining on the environment and on the people has never been researched – adds Anna Meres, Greenpeace Climate Campaign Coordinator.
In 2021, the Greenpeace discovered that at least 9 Polish hard coal mines had received 16 permits for coal mining in recent years without the environmental impact assessment required by law. Greenpeace has taken legal action demanding that permits to be withheld until mining companies investigate their environmental impact. As a result of social pressure, Polska Grupa Górnicza, which owns most of the mines, decided to carry out environmental impact assessments. Greenpeace will be a party to these proceedings and will relate, among others, to: to issues related to the impact of coal mining on the aquatic environment.
Greenpeace calls for the following:
- Introducing more stringent limits on the chloride and sulphide concentration (responsible for high salinity) in the wastewater discharged into rives by those companies
- Inspecting concessions issued to mining companies under water legislation
- Immediately performing environmental impact evaluations of hard coal mining
- Implementing modern technologies at mining companies, aimed at desalination of groundwater drained from coal deposits and discharged into rivers
- Eliminating legal chaos in the water and wastewater legislation that has contributed to the current situation
Greenpeace Foundation has sent a letter to the Commander-in-Chief of the Police, naming the parties responsible for the 2022 Oder Environmental Disaster. The Foundation has emphasised that it does not accept donations from governments, political parties or corporations (it is fully financed by donations from individuals), therefore it will not accept the prize in the amount of 1 million Polish zlotys – instead, it requests that this amount should be secured for the cause of creation and activities of the Lower Oder Valley National Park.