China's toxic spill reaches Russia's Amur river

The toxic spill that poisoned a Chinese river and forced Chinese authorities to cut off drinking water for millions has crossed the Russian border, Russian media reported today.

Russian Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu was in Khabarovsk, the biggest city on the path of the slick along the Amur River, yesterday and today to oversee preparations for handling the spill in Russia.

He told Channel One television that tests so far showed toxicity levels in the Amur to be normal.

“We have checked and prepared all the wells, they are ready,” Shoigu said.

He said that declaring a state of emergency was out of the question.

The slick was expected to hit the first settlement on the Russian side of the border, Nizhne-Leninskoye, later today and Khabarovsk on Wednesday or Thursday, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

The November 13 spill dumped 100 tons of toxins into northeastern China’s Songhua River, disrupting water supplies to millions of Chinese and straining relations with Moscow.

The spill forced water supplies to be cut off in the Chinese city of Harbin earlier, and Russian authorities are now trying to minimise the effects on Khabarovsk, a city of roughly 580,000 people.

The Interfax news agency reported that a Chinese-funded dam was being constructed on the Kazakevich channel of the Amur, some 35 miles upstream from Khabarovsk, in order to prevent part of the toxic slick from entering the Amur’s main channel. Citing the Chinese consulate in Khabarovsk, Interfax said construction on the dam began today.

The spill is about 110 miles long, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.

Russian environmentalists have accused the Chinese of covering up the scale of the spill and its consequences.

“The Chinese are hiding information about the actual extent of the ecological catastrophe but Russia will demand compensation from China for the damage,” said Vladimir Ispravnikov, director of the Institute of Ecological Expertise in Moscow.