Chinese City Resumes Taking Drinking Water From Songhua River
Posted on: Friday, 25 November 2005, 09:00 CST
Text of report by Irene Wang in Songyuan entitled: "Pollution panic ends in upstream city"; published by Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post website on 25 November
Water from the Songhua River is flowing out of taps in the Jilin city of Songyuan again after contamination of the waterway prompted the city to shut down supplies to part of the community.
Songyuan resumed drawing drinking water from the river on Wednesday afternoon, ending a stoppage that started on Friday.
The river divides the city into two parts, with the northern area most reliant on it as a water source. People living in the southern part of Songyuan and at the Jilin oil field take their water from the region's abundant underground sources.
According to a state media report, only 30 per cent of the city's 2.8 million people use water from the Songhua River. Residents yesterday said the city stopped supplying water last Friday in the areas on the north of the river until Wednesday.
On the riverbank yesterday, a local fisherman said there were no dead fish in the water and his catch had not changed. "Someone from Harbin came to survey the river a couple of days ago, and I even showed them a fish I caught on that day," the fisherman said.
But another resident said she had noticed white foam on the river's surface after the tap water stopped. "The foam was scattered here and there. We don't know what it was. We think it's probably related to pollution," she said.
She also said that soon after the local water utilities cut supplies last week, the level of the Songhua River rose dramatically before reverting to its normal level after two or three days.
"The authorities let the water from the Fengman reservoir flow into the Songhua River to flush the pollutants away," she said. "So the river water was about 1.5 metres higher than the present level."
The Fengman reservoir is also called Songhua Lake, and is upriver from the Jilin chemical plant which contaminated the river.
Source: BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific
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