Toxic water crisis easing for China’s Harbin city

By Chris Buckley

HARBIN, China (Reuters) – A surge of toxic chemicals
pouring down the river through a northeastern Chinese city was
expected to have passed through by early Sunday morning,
bringing respite from a water crisis that has plagued
residents.

As the nine million people in Harbin suffered a fourth day
without running water, soldiers and workers were racing to
ensure the city’s water would be safe to drink when taps were
turned back on, installing new filters at treatment plants, the
China Daily said.

The pipe network was shut down on Tuesday evening to
protect Harbin residents from up to 100 tons of cancer-causing
benzene compounds spilled into the Songhua river from which
Harbin pumps its water. An explosion at a chemical plant
upstream triggered the release of the toxins.

The spill will affect hundreds of thousands more people in
China alone as it heads downstream, and will then cross into
Russia, although officials say the concentration of toxins will
fall as other tributaries join the river, the China Daily
reported.

Benzene levels in Harbin were down to 3.7 times officially
acceptable levels early on Saturday compared to 30 times on
Friday morning, the city government Web site said.

But the passage of the 80 kilometer (50 mile) slick,
flowing at around 2 km an hour, has been slowed by low water
levels and lumps of ice that have already formed on the
freezing water, state media said.

ENVIRONMENTAL WORRIES

The crisis has raised questions about the environmental
costs of China’s economic boom. Around 70 percent of China’s
rivers are contaminated, and the State Council, or cabinet,
recently described the state of the country’s environment as
“grim.”

“This is going to encourage the people to have higher
expectations. People are increasingly concerned about
environmental issues…and this will be another stimulus,” said
Zhang Wei, an expert on environmental issues and the media.

Beijing has sent a team of investigators to probe the
accident, while the chemical plant’s parent company China
National Petroleum Corp has apologized for the pollution. But
one newspaper has accused officials of initially trying to hush
up the disaster.

Chinese reporters covering the crisis in Harbin said
editors had advised them some of their reports went too far and
they were expected to take the lead from the official Xinhua
news agency.

Environmentalists also have complained that China is not
sharing enough information to help protect Russia’s rivers and
its residents, including 1.5 million living in the Siberian
city of Khabarovsk, which draws drinking water from the
Songhua.

The pollution is expected to reach its water collection
points by early December.