A court case into the red sludge disaster that clamied 10 lives in western Hungary is to face a retrial, reports claim today.
According to MTI, the appeals court of Győr, in northwestern Hungary, threw out an earlier ruling in a case concerning Hungary’s 2010 red sludge flood, and ordered new procedures in the case.
A year ago, all 15 suspects were acquitted of charges of carelessness and causing public hazard, harming the environment and violating rules of waste management by a local court in Veszprém, a city in western Hungary.
In Hungary’s worst environmental disaster, a million cubic meters of toxic red sludge escaped from the reservoir of the Mal company’s alumina plant, flooding the nearby villages of Kolontár and Somlovásárhely, and the town of Devecser in October 2010.
The toxic spill killed 10 people, injured over 200, destroyed 358 homes, wiped out all life in two small rivers and polluted over 1,000 hectares of land.