How to poison a city

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I've been among the few that decided to gather on Tuesday afternoon in the centre of the city, in order to protest against what is happening with the smells in our city. It's been smelling like rotten eggs for years now.

Our city is surrounded by 3 working refineries and another one that has stopped production some time ago. Wherever you would go, there are different types of smell: from this sulphuric smell to natural gas, diesel or tar. This is the city of oilmen since the 19th century when they first learned how to use it on a large scale.

Still, this doesn't mean that technology doesn't improve for us also. So while refineries like OMV Vienna get to have the latest technology in terms of anti-pollution, we should get those too. But in order to get the investors to make those, you have to have it written in the law. And there is where the problem is in Romania:

The Laws

We live in a closed circle in Romania, one that is not getting us anywhere. The politicians never want to raise the level of education so each cycle of politicians in power do everything in their power to weaken the educational system. What at first (after '89) looked like stupidity, we can now say that it must be their goal to ruin every young mind. Having an uneducated citizen means that he's easier to be manipulated when he is needed to vote or to come to support the Party.
The lack of education, after tens of years of going on like this, weakens not only the future classes of politicians but also the populations as a whole.

For example, the majority of the population now do not even understand that what our Government is monitoring in terms of air pollution is equal to zero. The laws are made in order to monitor only parameters that are easy to keep in balance. The real threats, the real chemical compounds that refineries throw out of their chimneys, are not being monitored in Romania. Our country monitors usually the civic pollution (cars, chimneys etc.) but not what LukOil is putting inside the atmosphere in terms of real and dangerous substances. The problem is that, as I was saying before, uneducated people can't even comprehend these things so everywhere in Romania there is this "dolce far niente"; not even the words "mortal danger" scare anyone. They reply to you "Eh, everybody's gotta die sometime!". Which is true, but why does it have to prematurely so that some Russian can be even richer than he is?

The fact that LukOil is desulphurising its Russian Oil 500 meters away from a pretty big living area says everything about the respect investors have towards Romanian Population. Yes, the installation was inherited but it doesn't cost you close to bankruptcy to at least move it further. Moreover, I guess international laws do not really point to the solution of leaving the operator to just throw smells into the atmosphere. But it's not even in the atmosphere because sulphur falls down on the ground pretty fast and that's why people in the centre of the city can't smell it when others, a little bit further, do. When it rains, it's like they are possessed. They open the valve even more because rain cleanses the atmosphere to some degree so that the smell is kept even closer to its root.

When this kind of rain falls you can imagine it makes sulphuric acid, more or less. It melts in time metal sheets on the houses and a lot of plants are affected.

One would think that the people in a city like this make this kind of compromises because of money. Both on their jobs and inside the community, as very high taxes are being paid by such companies.

While in part true, Ploiești, considering the private sector, is quite a ritch city. A lot of companies exist and thrive here, developing and producing different products and services for the refineries. In terms of jobs, unfortunately people do not realise that in Romania we have a very big lack of trusty working hand. That is because we are bleeding people over the borders second after Syria. And that's not a myth, that's a reality. So being afraid of losing a job shouldn't be a problem if you are serious and hardworking.

On the other hand, when thinking about the money they give through taxes, apart from the usual schemes of trying to cover their profits and pay taxes as small as possible, the City's Mayorship has been having financial troubles for years. Due to bad management and bribery.

And among all these troubles, the physical integrity of my fellow citizens pops-up on the radar of authorities now. But it is a threat. Now, when local elections are upon us, now, when the Democratic Socialist Party (which is in power) organises immense gatherings on God knows who's money (bringing people even from 500 km away) in order to try to seize all power.

It's a mixed game of politics, money and power, where the value of the average human is worth more when he's dead than when he's alive.

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