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Chinese River Town Shuts Down Water Supply

Posted on: Thursday, 1 December 2005, 06:00 CST

By JOE McDONALD

DALIANHE, China - Residents of a town along a poisoned river in northern China lined up with jugs and buckets to get water from trucks Thursday after officials shut down running water to 26,000 people.

On the Russian side, residents were stocking up on bottled water ahead of a water shutdown as the stream of cancer-causing benzene approached. There were fears that heating systems in Russia's frigid Far East could be affected, since they use networks of hot water pipes.

China was preparing to send water filters and anti-pollution technicians to Russia.

The spill caused by a Nov. 13 chemical plant explosion in China was testing friendly ties between the two sides. Just last month, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Beijing and Moscow were enjoying their "best period in history," amid soaring Chinese purchases of Russian crude oil and stepped up anti-terror cooperation in Central Asia.

"The Chinese side has decided to provide the Russian side with monitoring devices to rapidly monitor the pollution and is willing to send people to install them," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a briefing in Beijing.

China also plans to send 150 tons of activated charcoal, which can absorb pollutants, he said. China has already apologized to Russia

He said he had no information on whether compensation has been discussed.

The Nov. 13 blast dumped about 100 tons of benzene into the Songhua River, which flows into the larger Heilong River - known as the Amur in Russia.

The 50-mile-long chemical slick was expected to reach the border city of Khabarovsk in days.

Local authorities said the shutdown in Dalianhe would last three days and Communist Party members went door-to-door giving out bottled water in an effort to show that China's leaders can protect the public.

"When one person has trouble, eight will lend a hand," read a banner attached to the side of one water truck. Workers stood by to help residents fill up their containers in frigid cold.

The chemical spill has embarrassed President Hu Jintao's government, which has promised to clean up the environment and do more to help ordinary Chinese people.

Experts say the damage is likely to be long-lasting, but the full effects won't be known until at least early next year.

Oleg Mitvol, the deputy chief of Russia's Federal Natural Resources Service, told reporters in Moscow that after the toxic slick passes Khabarovsk, authorities will have to keep cleaning water at least until next June as ice containing benzene will melt in the spring.

Mitvol said while the spill could not be compared to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster that contaminated a large territory with radioactive fallout, "the situation is extremely problematic from the point of view of ecology."

"We will be able to calculate it only in several years," he said after traveling to Khabarovsk, a city of about 580,000.

Residents there have scooped up bottled water in stores, leaving many shops with only carbonated water. Some were filling bathtubs and any container they could find at home.

City officials plan to send inspectors to halt profiteering on water, Khabarovsk's DTV channel reported. Prices for bottled water have doubled in some markets.

In Harbin, where the slick has already passed through and where authorities have said the water is again safe to drink, sales of fish from the Songhua River were still banned. Yet, fish sellers at the city's Poseidon Seafood Market said the water shut-off posed a bigger problem than the ban.

"We don't normally sell many fish from the Songhua River to begin with. ... The big problem was the lack of water to store fish in," said a stall owner who gave his name only as Mr. Gong. "Business has been pretty bad."

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Associated Press writers Burt Herman in Khabarovsk, Russia, Christopher Bodeen in Harbin, China, and Stephanie Hoo in Beijing contributed to this report.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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