20,000 Hungarians Protest Plan to Dam Danube River
BUDAPEST, Hungary — About 20,000 people demonstrated in front of Hungary’s parliament Saturday, saying a Slovak-Hungarian agreement for a Danube River dam spells environmental disaster.
Hungarian negotiators dropped their opposition to the cross-border project after a meeting with their Slovak counterparts Friday, essentially promising to build a dam on the Hungarian side as the two countries had planned in 1977.
Hungary laid the foundations of the Nagymaros dam on the Danube bend north of Budapest but demolished and removed them when Hungary pulled out of the project in 1992.
The Communist governments of Hungary and what was then Czechoslovakia agreed in 1977 to build the dam to produce electricity for both countries and make the Danube River navigable year-round.
Environmentalists argued that it would harm wildlife in Danube wetlands and contaminate drinking water reserves in Hungary. The dam project grew into a symbol of government heavy-handedness and sparked mass popular resistance that eventually helped overturn Communist rule in Hungary.
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