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Second Chinese city shuts down water plant
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-04 08:54
A second city in northeast China shut down a water plant on a poisoned river,
fearing contamination from the approaching toxic chemicals, a city official said
Saturday.
A stretch of
potentially lethal polluted river water headed towards one of China's
biggest cities on Thursday after an explosion at a petrochemical plant,
November 24 2005. [newsphoto] |
The shutdown Friday in Jiamusi, a city of about half a million people, came
as China's chief environmental regulator resigned, taking the blame for the Nov.
13 chemical spill into the Songhua River in China's northeast.
The disaster has disrupted water supplies to millions of people living along
the river.
The benzene from a chemical plant explosion upstream is expected to reach
Jiamusi on Tuesday, according to the government.
The city's No. 7 Water Plant "has been closed due to the possible
contamination of the water supplies," said an official who answered the phone at
the Jiamusi city government headquarters. He refused to give his name. The
official Xinhua News Agency said the plant supplies 70-80 percent of the city's
drinking water.
Jiamusi is the second-biggest Chinese city affected by the spill, after the
major industrial center of Harbin upstream suspended running water for 3.8
million people for five days after benzene polluted the water supply.
Jiamusi also has access to deep wells that will not be affected by the
contamination and so should be able to continue to supply drinking water, said
an employee of the water company, who refused to give her name. But hundreds of
villagers living near Jiamusi have also been ordered to stop using water from
shallow wells on the river bank.
A resident pushes water containers on a cart
after filling up from a water truck in Dalianhe, in China's northeast
Heilongjiang province Saturday Dec. 3, 2005. Water supply was cut off to
26,000 people in the town as a toxic slick of benzene from a chemical
plant explosion on Nov. 13 passes by in the Songhua River. Water supply in
nearby Jiamusi, a city of about 480,000 people, was shut down Friday, as
China's chief environmental regulator resigned, taking the blame for the
chemical spill into the river. [AP] |
The contamination has prompted the Chinese government to ship thousands of
bottles of drinking water to Jiamusi and other communities along the river and
to send fire trucks and other vehicles to deliver water to residential
neighborhoods.
Russian authorities expect the slick to cross the border Dec. 10 or 11, and
three days later reach Khabarovsk, the largest Russian city in the spill's path
and home to 580,000 people. Khabarovsk lies along the shores of the Amur river,
which is fed by the Songhua River.
Natalya Zimina, spokeswoman for the Khabarovsk regional government, said
authorities will shut down the water supply in Khabarovsk for about two days if
toxin levels are deemed dangerous. The spill is expected to take about five days
to pass through Khabarovsk.
China on Saturday donated a railcar full of activated charcoal to Khabarovsk
to help it purify the water. China's representative in this Far East city,
Consul General Fan Xianrong, said China will help with whatever means we can.
"The Amur River is our common river and we of course have responsibilities
that we need to take."
Chinese and Russian experts have set up a joint monitoring post on the river,
Xinhua said.
The slick is slowing down and lengthening as the river freezes, the Chinese
government says. Xinhua said Saturday that the slick, originally 50 miles long,
now stretches for 90 miles.
Toxins are still some 18 times the allowable levels, Xinhua said.
On Friday, the director of China's State Environmental Protection
Administration resigned after being blamed for the disaster, state media
reported.
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