Under the Water, a Church Still Stands

Somewhere in the Apuseni Mountains, a lake is growing.

Nobody planned for this. That is the thing people rarely say about Geamăna. They planned for a copper mine. They planned for a waste pond. They did not plan for what the valley would become once they opened it up and walked away.

In 1977, the people who lived in Geamăna were told to leave. Underneath their fields, underneath their church, underneath their grandfather’s graves, there was copper. The valley was the perfect bowl to pour the mine’s toxic waste into. Practical. Efficient. Done.

A thousand people scattered across Romania. The graves were never moved. The promises were never kept.

What came next was not a flood. It was something slower and worse.

The waste from the Roșia Poieni mine began filling the valley. And then something happened that nobody had quite accounted for. The water took on a life of its own. It turned grey, then rust-red, then colours that have no name in any language designed for natural things. Acid mine drainage. Chemical reactions. The earth, processing what had been done to it.

This is what it looked like as the water came in. Houses still standing, roofs still intact, haystacks still in the yard. Spring blossom on the trees. The water simply arrived one day, red and slow, and did not leave.

The lake grows by one metre every year. It has been growing for nearly fifty years. Nobody controls it anymore. Nobody is sure anyone ever did.

In the middle of it, a church steeple. Still there. The mining company tried to demolish it a few years ago. Former residents pushed back and the work was cancelled. But the lake does not need anyone’s permission. It will reach the steeple in its own time, on its own terms.

A postman named Cornel Pop stayed in the valley after everyone else left. Years later someone asked him why. He said: “I came here to work as a postman. But after this happened, I realised that no one here needs a postman anymore.”

He stayed anyway.

There is something in that which goes beyond one valley in Romania. Every generation believes it has finally learned to master the earth. Every generation opens something it cannot close. Geamăna is not a story about communism. It is not even a story about one mine.

It is a story about a lake that keeps growing, on a hillside in western Romania.
The earth is still there. It remembers.

Geamăna is in Alba County, Apuseni Mountains. The nearest town is Câmpeni, roughly two hours from Cluj-Napoca by car. The church steeple is marked on Google Maps. Do not touch the water.

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Sources: Radio Free Europe, Romania’s Sinking Village; Wikipedia, Roșia Poieni copper mine.

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_{Photo credits: Hero image © Salajean| Dreamstime.com.}

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