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Polluted river water heads toward Chinese city

Posted on: Wednesday, 23 November 2005, 19:25 CST

By Chris Buckley

HARBIN, China (Reuters) - A stretch of potentially lethal polluted river water headed toward one of China's biggest cities, Harbin, on Thursday after an explosion at a petrochemical plant.

China said on Wednesday the blast had caused "major pollution" in the Songhua River from which Harbin, capital of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang and home to nine million people, draws its drinking water.

Harbin city officials temporarily restored water supplies to allow residents to stock up in a city where winter temperatures regularly drop below minus 20 Celsius. People crowded the airport and railway stations to leave the area, a witness said.

The provincial government said the 80 km (50 mile) stretch of polluted river water was due to have reach Harbin's water supply inlet at 5 a.m. on Thursday (2100 GMT Wednesday) and flow past the city itself on Saturday.

"We hope citizens can take time to hoard as much water as possible," an executive from the Harbin water company was quoted as saying by China's Xinhua news agency.

The provincial government has told Harbin residents to stay away from the river to avoid possible exposure to airborne contaminants coming off the water, Xinhua said.

The State Environmental Protection Administration said the polluted water contained nearly 30 times more than normal levels of chemicals with benzene, an industrial solvent and component of petrol.

People who drink water with a little benzene can suffer, the China Daily quoted Zhang Lanying, director of the Environment and Resources Institute of Jilin University, as saying.

"Massive amounts can lead to the disorder of blood cells; in other words, leukemia," she said.

"GRIM ENVIRONMENTAL SITUATION"

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao chaired a government meeting on pollution problems in the country.

"Our country's environmental situation remains grim," the State Council was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

"As the economy has expanded, waste of resources and energy has continued growing, and the pressures on environmental protection are increasingly heavy."

By late on Wednesday, feelings among Harbin residents seemed to be shifting from panic to anxious resignation and anger. Most shops and restaurants remained open, although business was generally slow.

Wang Qiang, a rural migrant who works in a Harbin bathhouse, said his employer had put him on unpaid holiday.

"We have to pay for drinking water ourselves. It's not cheap, but I can afford it. But I hope this won't go on for too long," he said.

Provincial governor Zhang Zuoji promised to be the first person to drink tap water when supplies were restored.

"After four days, I'll have the first drop," he said.

Chinese people usually boil tap water before drinking it, even when pollution is not an issue.

"A lot of people here blame Jilin for not acting sooner after the explosion," said Harbin resident Zhou Qicai. "There were at least several days between the explosion and when they issued any warnings for downstream."

Russia's environmental protection agency said on Wednesday it was worried the pollution could affect drinking water supplies in its Khabarovsk region, which the Songhua enters several hundred kilometers downstream from Harbin.

Russian Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev said all steps would be taken to ensure there was no health risk, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

"But so as to make sure these measures are effective, we need more information from the Chinese. We need to more accurately know the make-up of the pollutants," he said.

(Additional reporting by Niu Shuping, Vivi Lin and Joel Kirkhart in Beijing)

Source: REUTERS

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