An escape of thousands of cubic metres of highly acidic waters from a waste storage reservoir belonging to the Andalucian fertiliser company Fertiberia has provoked a furious reaction from environmental groups in the southern Spanish province. Fertilizer waste spill. The waves broke the dam wall and allowed liquid with a pH of just 1.5 to escape into the nearby Rio Tinto, and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean's Gulf of Cadiz. A pH value of 7 represents a neutral solution, neither acid nor base.
Lower numbers indicate increasing acidity and each unit represents a ten-fold change.
An intensive clean-up operation of the Do ana area by national and regional authorities has only recently been completed. This is the second storage dam break in the vicinity of Huelva this year. The organisation says that the water contained heavy metals such as arsenic and lead as well as radioactive isotopes, and puts the seriousness of the accident on a level with the Aznalcollar escape. The political party United Left claims that it too will take the authorities to court. It has challenged political and industrial leaders who have minimised the problem and disclaim all responsibility for it, to bathe in the river, saying that if they do, they will emerge hairless from the water.