In Devecser, one of several towns that was hit by the flood a week ago and where many people are employed at the alumina plant, Mr. Bakonyi's detention was met by mixed feelings.
"Someone surely has to be held responsible, but he wasn't here when the reservoir was built, so he can't carry all the blame," 56-year-old caterer Maria Kiss said. "I never heard any of the plant workers complain about him."
The body of the flood's eighth victim, an elderly woman, was found Monday afternoon near Devecser. The woman was the last person reported missing.
In Kolontar, the town closest to the damaged storage pool, which is 25 acres in size, construction continued of a new containment wall to protect the area in case of a new flood.
The wall — 610 yards long with an average height of 8.8 feet — was being built of dolomite rock and clay, the National Disaster Management Directorate said.
It is intended to be sturdy enough to protect the unaffected parts of Kolontar, from which more than 700 residents have been evacuated, as well as towns farther from the reservoir, such as Devecser, in case of another flood.
Last week's sludge spill flooded three villages in less than an hour. Fifty people are still hospitalized, several in serious condition. About 184 million gallons of the sludge was released.
The damaged reservoir still contains 3.25 million cubic yards of sludge, but it no longer has a large layer of water on top, so any new spills are expected to move slower and travel less distance — probably no more than about a half-mile — than the first one did.
Environmental State Secretary Zoltan Illes said additional risks were centered on a reservoir next to the damaged one, which contained 26.4 million gallons of caustic liquid.
Authorities fear that if the cracks on the broken reservoir's northern wall continued to widen and the wall falls, the second storage pool could also break, releasing a caustic flow.
