Saturday, 14 June 2014

Geamana, The Romanian Village Flooded by a Toxic Lake



Geamăna is an abandoned village in Romania and it is truly looks like an amazing place but it has a very sad story which starts when the valley was flooded by toxic water from a copper-open-pit mine (Roșia Poieni). Copper exploitation at the mines of Rosia Poieni in the Apuseni Mountains, in Alba County, in Romania, was like a scourge for residents of the twin villages located in the foothills where excavations were carried out. Their ordeal started in 1977, when Romania’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu decided to exploit the massive copper deposit discovered underground. 

The government forced the residents of the nearby village of Geamana to quit their homes and abandon their way of life in order to make way for the toxic waste from Roşia Poieni mining pit. There’re about 400 families were exiled and their village swapped by an artificial lake that served as a kind of catch-basin for the mine’s contaminated sludge to flow into. The lake water is highly toxic laced with cyanide and other chemicals. As the lake grew, it surrounded what was once an attractive village. Few towers and houses are all that remains today.


Source: Amusing Planet

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