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Kolontár, 4 October 2010. A dam at a Hungarian aluminium factory near Kolontár broke. Approximately 1.5 million cubic metres of alkaline red sludge and water were released with disastrous consequences: 10 people died, hundreds of hectares of agricultural land were contaminated. One year after these events, we collected information on the current environmental conditions in the area. As an ongoing effort, the Accident Prevention and Control Expert Group of the ICPDR continues its work to avoid or mitigate such disasters in the future.

Bratislava, 13 September 2011. German children have won the „International Danube Art Master 2011“ competition, as the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) announced today.

Danube Basin, 29 June 2011. Danube Day 2011 will be celebrated on the 29th of June and calls on people of the 14 countries to get active in protecting water resources. This year, the annual Danube Day will receive a lot of attention, as it coincides with the adoption of the European Union (EU) Danube Strategy. This set of EU policies and initiatives will affect the lives of more than 100 million Europeans who live in the Danube catchment area and neighbouring regions.

Sofia, 1 May 2011. In order to protect endangered sturgeon species, Bulgaria decided to ban sturgeon fishing in May 2011. Romania was the first country to implement a sturgeon fishing ban in the Danube in 2006 and is now followed by its southern neighbour.

In response to the hazard of flooding, the ICPDR adopted the Action Programme for Sustainable Flood Prevention in the Danube River Basin at the ICPDR Ministerial Meeting on 13 December 2004. As a follow-up to this Action Programme, seventeen sub-basin flood action plans were published by the ICPDR in 2009.

Ajka, 15 November 2011. The redsludge accident of October 4 has generated a world-wide interest in the area of Ajka in Western Hungary. Since then, media attention has ceased. This article aims to provide an English summary of the measures that were taken to manage the accident since October 20.

Kolotar, 4 October 2010. The acute toxic risk deriving from the heavy metals in the red sludge is rather low, as their concentrations are rather low. However, the chronic toxicity threat is high.