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Residents of Russian City Assured Water is Safe Despite Slick

Posted on: Sunday, 25 December 2005, 09:00 CST

By Yuras Karmanau

A Kremlin envoy assured residents of Khabarovsk today that it was safe to drink the city's water despite a toxic slick from China slowly passing through the river that feeds their water supplies. But many people were doubtful, stocking up on cases of bottled water and making worried calls to a hotline.

The dreaded 110-mile-long slick entered the city limits Thursday, five weeks after the Chinese plant spewed 100 tons of benzene, nitrobenzene and other toxins into the Songhua River. The Nov. 13 accident shut off running water to the Chinese city of Harbin's 3.8 million people for five days. The Songhua becomes the Amur in Russia.

In China, another toxic river spill, flowing toward China's southern business capital of Guangzhou, has been stopped by a dam as the government rushed to protect water supplies to the city of 7 million people, a news report said today.

Authorities closed the Baishiyao Dam at the city of Yingde, about 60 miles north of Guangzhou, to trap the spill of cadmium flowing down the Bei River, the China Daily newspaper reported, citing local officials. The cadmium was dumped into the river by a smelter.

The twin disasters highlight the precarious state of China's water supplies for industry and homes. Regulators say its major rivers are badly polluted and millions of people lack access to clean water.

The accidents are an embarrassment to President Hu Jintao's government, which has promised to clean up environmental damage from China's 25 years of breakneck economic growth.

Kamil Iskhakov, the representative of President Vladimir Putin in Russia's Far East, toured a water plant and laboratory that is testing samples from the Amur.

"The water itself is of good quality. There is no contamination whatsoever. Everything is below the norm. Khabarovsk residents are drinking normal water," he said in comments televised on Russia's national TV channels.

A regional official in charge of efforts to combat the Chinese spill, Vladimir Popov, even said that the tons of carbon filters used to cleanse the water of the chemicals meant that it was of better quality than usual.

Source: Buffalo News

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