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See the grotesque beauty of mining waste

In images that could be mistaken for paintings, a photographer records how mine waste has ruined a valley near his Romanian hometown.

Since first visiting the copper mine’s polluted lake, Gheorghe Popa has returned many times. The scene, he says, “keeps drawing me to it like a forbidden fruit.”

ByHicks Wogan

Photographs byGheorghe Popa

September 7, 2021

4 min read

The Roșia Poieni copper mine appears like a wound on Romania’s Apuseni Mountains. An open-pit mine operated by a state-owned company, it draws from the largest copper deposit in the country. In 1978, needing somewhere to discard the mine’s waste, President Nicolae Ceaușescu initiated the removal of residents from the neighboring village of Geamăna. Water and the mine’s sludge were then released into the village and the Şesii Valley, forming an artificial, partly viscous lake.

Gheorghe Popa grew up about two hours away by car, in the town of Aiud, at the base of the Apuseni Mountains. A pharmacist and nature photographer, Popa first encountered the dumping site in 2014. “To this day,” he wrote in the Romanian edition of National Geographic, “I can’t forget that chemical smell that even filled my mouth.” The unearthly scene mesmerized him: amid an otherwise picturesque mountain range, a lake tie-dyed in swirls of yellow, red, orange, and turquoise.

Picture of like web of abstract shapes created by the chemical residues mixed with the freshly fallen snow. — Waste from the Roșia Poieni mine is filling the Șesii Valley, in western Romania, with a colorful brew. The watery mix includes tailings—material left after the separation of valuable raw ore—which can be hazardous if not properly contained.

Picture of green and yellow streams in white waters — Waste from the Roșia Poieni mine is filling the Șesii Valley, in western Romania, with a colorful brew. The watery mix includes tailings—material left after the separation of valuable raw ore—which can be hazardous if not properly contained.

Picture of bright colorful swirls — Popa sees a duality in his drone photographs of the contaminated site: The lake’s bright colors, he writes, are both “surreally beautiful” and “repulsive by their nature.”

Picture of yellow splashes in bright blue waters. — Popa sees a duality in his drone photographs of the contaminated site: The lake’s bright colors, he writes, are both “surreally beautiful” and “repulsive by their nature.”

Picture of dead trees in green and yellow waters. — For some 20 years after mining began in the late 1970s, the Romanian government evacuated hundreds of residents of the village of Geamăna. Villagers say that officials promised to relocate their cemetery but never did. Buildings in Geamăna were also left in place. Each year, the water level rises by roughly three feet, swallowing more of the village. Houses, roads, trees: All are sinking beneath the slurry.

During subsequent visits, Popa deployed a drone to capture bird’s-eye views. The polluted valley has been fertile ground for his work: The visage of the lake and the possibilities for photographing it are always changing, depending on the substances poured into it, the time of year or day, and the quality of the light.

A small number of residents remain near the lake, hanging on in homes above the rising waterline. Some living in the area work at the mine. Popa also has witnessed ducks gliding across the lake’s multicolored surface. He hopes his photographs—though they may be inviting at first glance—will prove cautionary to viewers. In his words, “I wish the ‘beauty’ of this disaster could forever remind us that we must never let something like this happen again.”