BUDAPEST (AP) - More than a month after a cyanide spill in Romania killed tonnes of fish in the Tisza River, Hungarian authorities lifted a water quality alert on the waterway Tuesday.

The decision was made after no dead fish were found in the water in the past 24 hours, Kornelia Kocsis, deputy director of the Upper Tisza Region Environmental Protectorate, told the government news agency MTI.

A coalition of 14 Hungarian environmentalist groups announced Tuesday they had formed an alliance to help the government rehabilitate the Tisza.

"However, the majority of the rehabilitation work should be left for nature, and, unless there's another dosage of poisoning coming, it will regenerate itself," Laszlo Haraszthy, head of the Hungarian division of World Wide Fund for Nature, told reporters.

The alert had been ordered on the Upper Tisza after large amounts of cyanide spilled into the Somes River in Romania from the containment pond of a gold mine in Baia Mare, Romania, on Jan. 30. Cyanide is used to process gold ore.

The Somes, known as the Szamos in Hungary, flows into the Tisza on Hungarian territory; from there, that river flows into Yugoslav territory, joins the Danube and empties into the Black Sea. The cyanide caused major environmental damage all its way, especially at the Upper Tisza region, where concentrations of the poison were highest.

According to Hungarian Environment Minister Pal Pepo, some 200 tonnes of fish were killed by the chemical.

© The Canadian Press, 2000