Jamana - “toxic” village (20 photos)

The village of Jamana in the Romanian mountains was once an ordinary settlement, and now it is almost completely flooded with toxic sewage waters from a copper mine. Local residents year after year were forced move higher up the village to escape the waste. Recently photographers showed current photographs of the village.





Changes began in the Romanian village of Jamane in 1977. when the country's then leader Nicolae Ceausescu decided to allow mining copper in the Rocha Poieni area. At that time the copper mine was the largest in Europe. At that time there were about 400 houses in the village, and about a thousand local residents who hoped that thanks to the copper mine the area will get rich and they will live better - but it didn’t work out.



In subsequent years, the authorities carried out expropriations. About 300 families left the village - each family was paid compensation for left at home. In 1986, the village began to be actively flooded with waste from the mine. The poisonous waters probably contained cyanide, which has high toxicity. Soon the water covered the roofs of the houses, and almost completely flooded the village church - now only its spire. Today, about 20 people continue to live in the village.



“First, the cherry and plum trees began to dry out. The earth was already becoming poisonous, and the trees immediately reacted to this. This all started in the late 1970s. Then the streams that flowed here one after another became red, as if bloody," says one of the the remaining inhabitants of Jamana, Nikolai Pratsa.



"When the expropriation began, the authorities did not want to take all my land. I still have a plot of enough hectares left. But we We didn't receive much money in compensation. We thought and We decided that we couldn't just leave everything that we were here behind. built and left. So we stayed here, seeing how the streams became poisonous, as house after house sank, the tavern where residents used to gather villages, and then a church that is sinking to this day," says Nikolai.



Now on the site of the village there is a toxic swamp of production waste, which continues to rise. All waste from copper quarries fall mainly into the artificial lake Valya-Shesiy, located between two slopes near the village. Although it has the dam, the reservoir still poses a danger, and for many years Romanian authorities did nothing to eliminate it. According to the latest data, environmental protection in this area requires investment in amounting to 15 million euros.