On October 4, 2010, 700,000 cubic meters (21m-24m cubic feet) of toxic sludge escaped from a reservoir of a Hungarian alumina plant in the West of Hungary, flooding three villages with a 25 km-long, 1-2 km-wide, and occasionally 7 ft-high cascade of highly caustic mud. Officially ten people died from burns or suffocation, and hundreds were treated in hospitals. Over two hundred houses that survived have to demolished. All life in the nearest river, the Marcal, a tributary of the Danube, have been extinguished--fish, birds, insects, and plants. According to government officials, this is Hungary's worst ecological disaster. The talk will review the historical context of this disaster focusing, first, on the company and its technology, including the causes of the spill; second, on changes in related environmental policies, from state socialism through EU accession; and third, and most importantly, on the political and ideological mining of the spill both by the nationalist government and liberals.