Toxic stretch of river reaches city

A long stretch of river carrying toxins from a chemical plant explosion today flowed into a Chinese city where authorities shut off water supply to millions of residents for fear that the pollution could cause cancer.

The contaminated section of water is some 50 miles long, authorities said.

“It will take about 40 hours to pass,” Shi Zhongxin, director of the Harbin’s water bureau, said on state television. “After it passes … we will have to make efforts to disinfect the water.”

In the meantime, schools were closed and bottled water was being trucked in from elsewhere in China. Harbin, a city of 3.8 million people, was also digging 100 new wells.

The decision to shut off water services on Tuesday set off panicked buying of bottled water, soft drinks and milk, leaving supermarket shelves bare. Families filled bathtubs and buckets before taps ran dry.

Calm was restored by today, with huge pallets holding dozens of bottles of water forming towering stacks in the city’s wholesale districts. Authorities froze prices to prevent overcharging.

One-litre bottles were selling for around 50p (€0.73).

China’s central government confirmed for the first time yesterday that the shutdown was a result of a “major water pollution incident” in the Songhua River after an explosion at a chemical plant on November 13 that killed five people in the nearby city of Jilin.

Local officials earlier disclosed the reason for the shutdown, but officials in Beijing had refused to comment.

The tip-off was a trail of dead fish in the Songhua River, the official China Daily newspaper reported today. A water-checking station found on November 20 that benzene and nitrobenzene levels were far higher than state standards – with nitrobenzene at one point 103.6 times higher than normal, it said.

“Massive amounts can lead to the disorder of blood cells – in other words, leukaemia,” Zhang Lanying, director of the Environment and Resources Institute at Jilin University, was quoted as saying.

The explosion, which forced the evacuation of 10,000 people, was blamed on human error in a tower that processed benzene, a toxic, flammable liquid.

In neighbouring Russia, news reports said concern was growing over the pollution threat in the border city of Khabarovsk, about 435 miles downriver from Harbin.

China’s Foreign Ministry said it had informed Russia of the case.

The disaster highlights the precarious state of China’s scarce water supplies. The country is trying to meet competing demands from its 1.3 billion people and booming industry, while the government says major rivers are dangerously polluted.

With its huge population, China ranks among countries with the smallest water supplies per person. Hundreds of cities regularly suffer shortages of water for drinking or industry.

Protests have erupted in rural areas throughout China over complaints that pollution is ruining water supplies and damaging crops. Protesters often accuse officials of failing to enforce environmental rules either in exchange for bribes or for fear of hurting local business.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” said Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and author of the 2004 book “The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future.”

“We’ve seen over the past six months or so a number of factory-related protests ... because factories don’t live up to or don’t enforce China’s own environmental regulations and laws,” she said. “So if, in fact, this is a case of that happening, then this is part of a much broader, systemic problem.”

Harbin is one of the coldest places in China, with overnight temperatures this week of minus 12 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit). During its famed “ice lantern” festival, giant slabs of ice cut from the Songhua are used to construct copies of famous buildings and artworks in public parks.

The shutdown affects the city of Harbin but not its suburbs, said an official of the city water department.