• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Chemical Plants Called 'Risk' for China's Rivers

Posted on: Wednesday, 25 January 2006, 09:00 CST

By From news reports

Many of the 21,000 chemical plants that line China's rivers are "obvious environmental safety risks" and the government will make addressing water pollution a top priority, the nation's head of environmental protection, Zhou Shengxian, said Tuesday.

"We've developed our economy at the expense of the environment," Zhou, who heads the State Environmental Protection Administration, said at a press conference in Beijing. He said the government's traditional approach to development was "pollute and destroy first, and treat later."

Zhou said the number of such plants was ascertained only after a major chemical spill late last year triggered a nationwide survey. A blast on Nov. 13 at a PetroChina chemical plant in the northeast province of Jilin sent an 80-kilometer-long, or 50-mile-long, toxic slick down the Songhua River, interrupting water supplies to nearly four million residents in the city of Harbin before moving on to the Russian border.

Zhou's predecessor, Xie Zhenhua, resigned as the environmental protection chief on Dec. 2 after being criticized by the State Council, China's highest ruling body, for his handling of the situation.

Zhou said the survey, carried out at the end of the year, had uncovered "more than 100 enterprises with potential safety problems." He added that the environmental administration was looking into these enterprises and would publish the results.

More than half the 21,000 plants were are located along either the Yangtze or the Yellow Rivers, he said. About 400 million people, or nearly one third of the nation's population, live along the banks of the Yangtze, while 100 million are settled in the Yellow River basin.

"In this situation, if a problem arises, the consequences could be unthinkable," Zhou said.

The full extent of environmental damage from nitrobenzene that spilled into the Songhua was still being determined, Zhou said Tuesday. Latest measurements show the average concentration level of the chemical in the river is 0.00031 milligrams per liter well within national safety standards, Chen Jining, a professor at Tsinghua University, said at the briefing.

But thawing ice along the river in spring will release some trapped nitrobenzene into the river, Zhou said.

Several spills in the past three months have polluted Chinese rivers with cadmium, diesel oil and nitrobenzene.

In the latest incident, Zhuzhou Smelter Group, China's third- biggest lead producer, was ordered this month to halt three production lines in Hunan Province. Cadmium, a poisonous chemical that can cause neurological disorders and cancer, leaked from the Zhuzhou Smelter into the Xiangjiang River during a silt-cleaning operation, the provincial government said.

Addressing water pollution is the government's "priority of priorities," Zhou said. Government reports have said that more than 70 percent of China's rivers and lakes are polluted, while about 400 of China's 600 largest cities suffer from water shortages.

Source: International Herald Tribune

More News in this Category