Terms like Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, or Deepwater Horizon are known to all of us. We inevitably associate them with man-made environmental disasters. Many of us even know what we did that day. But what do you associate with Geamăna? Probably not much.
The cornerstone for the fate of Geamăna was laid behind the Iron Curtain in 1978 during the time when Romania was firmly in the Stalinist hands of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The decision was made that a valley in the Apuseni Mountains would become a settling basin for the largest copper mine in Romania. The fact that the small, beautiful village of Geamăna lay in the middle of this valley did not play a major role. It was decided that around 1,000 residents would be simply relocated. The resident families were rewarded for giving up their houses, only they were paid such poor square meter prices that they could only buy inferior land elsewhere, or had to go into debt to find something useful for themselves and their families.
I first became aware of it myself through a travel blog, and about a year later, I was traveling on a bumpy road towards the "toxic valley."
#21 Never Surrender
34points
#22 The World Is Upside Down
33points
#23 Pulsing Death
32points
