Toxic Spill in Switzerland Poses Ecological Threat Along Rhine

West Germany’s environment minister warned Saturday night that the ecological balance of the Rhine River, Western Europe’s busiest waterway, might be damaged by toxic waste poured into it in Switzerland last week.

Minister Walter Wallmann said it is still too early to determine the extent to which the Rhine might be affected, but he suggested that in the meantime no drinking water be drawn from it.

The Rhine was polluted when a fire broke out in a chemical factory in Basel, Switzerland, and the waters used to extinguish the fire poured into the Rhine along with pesticides and mercury from the chemical plant.

Those pollutants have been drifting down the Rhine past major cities in France and Germany and will eventually flow into the North Sea at the Netherlands port of Rotterdam.

The current stretch of pollutants is said to be about 25 miles long and is due to flow by Bonn today before passing through the most populous area of Western Germany.

The Dutch are planning to divert the polluted waters directly into the North Sea so that they do not enter adjacent canals and other waterways.

The Rhine, one of the major scenic attractions of Western Europe, rises in the Alps and flows northward out of Switzerland, forming the French-West German border for a considerable distance, then continuing through West Germany and on to the Netherlands and the sea.

It is the main artery of water-borne commerce in Europe, but it also is the home of several species of fish and other forms of marine life.

So far, thousands of fish have been reported killed by last week’s pollution.

The West German government earlier accused Swiss authorities of being lax in alerting France, West Germany and the Netherlands, the three nations downriver, to the dangers from the pesticides. Switzerland apologized to France and West Germany for the pollution but maintained that it was careful to alert downstream communities.