The Polish government has announced a reward of one million zlotys (€215,000) for information on the causes of large-scale pollution of the Oder River, which flows from Germany through the Czech Republic to Poland.
This is reported by "Polish Radio".
Pollution was discovered on the border with Germany, it led to mass extinction of fish. According to Polish officials, ten tons of dead fish have already been retrieved from the Oder. "Together with the Minister of Internal Affairs and the police, we agreed that a special reward will be determined so that it is possible to establish as soon as possible who and when became the culprit of such a crime against the environment," — stressed the Prime Minister of the country, Mateusz Morawiecki. Poland also plans to address this issue to Germany.
At the same time, employees of the laboratory, which is responsible for checking the quality of water in the Oder, found a high content of mercury in the samples, writes Deutsche Welle.
It is noted that the pollution of the Oder is likely to affect marine life as far as the Baltic Sea. The Ministry of the Environment of the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany) urged residents to refrain from fishing in the river and using water from it for any purpose. The mayor of the East German city of Schwedt in the federal state of Brandenburg, Annekathrin Hoppe, called the death of thousands of fish an ecological disaster of an unprecedented scale, the consequences of which can be felt for years. German emergency workers were dispatched to collect the dead fish on Saturday morning.