Sajóbábony is a town in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County , Miskolc District .
Sajóbábony is located 13 kilometers north of Miskolc , in the Bükk region , at the confluence of the Tardonai hills and the Sajó basin. The settlement is divided into two distinct parts: the village and the housing estate. The village is hidden in the valley of the Bábony stream, it is not visible from the main road 26, except for the Reformed and the Catholic church. The housing estate, which is a significant part of Sajóbábony in terms of size and population, is located in the plain area of the Sajó Basin , giving the impression that the settlement has `flowed ‘out of the valley onto the plain, where it is then conveniently` spread out.
Sights
The Chemical Works of Northern Hungary (ÉMV) operated here, which employed nearly three thousand people in its heyday. The main profile of ÉMV was pesticides and foamed plastics. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet market, the company ran into a temporary economic difficulty, from which quick and decisive decisions could have been made (as BVK in Kazincbarcika, now BorsodChem, example), if the then tax office (representing the Hungarian state, ie practically the owner of ÉMV) does not initiate liquidation against the company, citing arrears of tax debts. As a result of the liquidation proceedings, the ÉMV was split into several smaller companies (most of which themselves went bankrupt, although some of them successfully survived the economic collapse.) The former ÉMV area was later declared an industrial park with several small and medium-sized enterprises. The local government also benefits from the revenues of the companies operating in the industrial park, through the business tax (in 2004, for example, this amount kicked in at more than HUF 200 million, in comparison, this amount is located in Sajóecseg, on the other side of the main road.barely reached HUF 6 million), so Sajóbábony is one of the more affluent settlements in relation to Borsod.
During the years of operation of the ÉMV, several serious industrial accidents occurred, which briefly focused on the village. It was here that the biggest industrial accident in modern Hungary took place on June 1, 1979, in which 13 workers disappeared when the TNT plant exploded (more than 10 tons of TNT exploded in the last afternoon shift before the final shutdown.) One of the interesting consequences of the accident was that for a while ambulances could only come to the factory siren if they were sure there was a survivor (this was for mercy reasons: ambulances arrived siren after the explosion, which seemed to be just injuries, while only one of the 13 workers human finger left).
After the regime change , Greenpeace’s awareness-raising actions sometimes sparked prominence (protesting over the hazardous waste accumulated over decades of chemical production and its improper storage).
György Moldova , in his report book entitled ‘Contamination of Hungary’ written in the mid-1990s, reports on his visit to Sajóbábony, in which he paints a devastating picture of the situation in the village, highlighting the sad environmental situation. The chaos caused by the ongoing liquidation of the ÉMV, the sudden rise in unemployment, the general economic downturn, and the desperate struggle of smaller companies trying to survive in the ruins, often ignoring environmental considerations, may explain the situation at the time. In the book, György Moldova consistently refers to ÉMV as “ÉVM”, which may have been due to the shortening of the much better known Budapest Chemicals as “BVM”.
After the change of regime, as in many other places in Borsod, no street name was changed in the settlement (for example, Kun Béla utca was for a long time), because in the economic situation at that time most of the residents considered that spending money and tracing can afford it.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the archaeologists of the University of Miskolc started excavations on one of the hilltops belonging to the area of the settlement and excavated a site for making cracked stone tools. Archaeologists have found that the stones used to make the stone tools could have been brought here from further afield because no such rocks could be found in the area.
