Aushang: Fr, 2005-11-25 05:23 | Betreff: Panic In The City

Locals aware of the pending water stoppage began hoarding water and food supplies as early as Sunday, amid government pronouncements to remain calm and "stop listening to rumors," state press reports said.

http://www.terradaily.com/2005/051122065928.1p8wdm92.html

 The government was also forced to quell wild rumors that Harbin was going to be hit by an earthquake, state press said, a reflection of both the panic in the city and the lack of timely information by authorities.

"The talk that Harbin will be hit by an earthquake in the coming days is purely rumor, residents should not worry, there is no need to panic," a Heilongjiang seismological bureau spokesman told a government-run news website.

Aushang: Fr, 2005-11-25 19:15 | Betreff: lots of news

http://treehouse.ofb.net/go/en/node/420

 The coverage today is all pretty sensational.

"100 metric tons of pollutants"

 "An 80-km (50-mile) contaminated stretch of water reached Harbin at about 0300 local time on Thursday and was expected to take 40 hours to pass."

"PetroChina, in a statement on its website, apologised for the “inconvenience” caused by the spill."

"Harbin on Wednesday temporarily restored water supplies shut off at midnight to allow residents to stock up as a wave of polluted river water flowed toward the area."

"[a local paper] reports that inhabitants were still fishing, despite the threat to their health."

What I wonder about is all of the villages along the way down the river from Jilin.  What happens when they go back and their fields next to the river are poisoned with benzene?  The people in Harbin will be fine -- it's a big city.  But the farmers...

Aushang: Di, 2005-11-29 08:32 | Betreff: As far as those villages go,

As far as those villages go, the obvious thing happened

Aushang: Di, 2005-11-29 08:34 | Betreff: this blog, written by a

this blog, written by a jilin native that got sent back to jilin on assignment after the explosion has some interesting insights about the disaster and also about jilin.

Aushang: Do, 2005-12-08 13:41 | Betreff: Let's build another dam!

China is considering building a dam in front of the toxic spill, so that it doesn't make its way into Russia.

Seems like a bad idea at first, but I can see why they're considering it.  This way,  only the poor village is at the fork of the rivers gets screwed -- pay 'em some money and move em somewhere else and bingo:

You used to have a big international incident that will be getting headlines every single day until the slick dumps into the ocean and maybe poisons a lot of fish which might have originally been intended for the dinner table.

Now you have a poisonous reservoir in a place where people no longer live, and have "successfully" fixed the problem.  Eventually, you can even use the place to generate more electricity.

I have no doubt (seeing how many times the roads around here get torn apart and rebuilt from scratch) that the Chinese government will be able to build a dam over the course of a weekend.

But if I were the Russians, I'd rather have a benzene slick passing by on a known and finite timeframe than have a big lake-o-benzene ready to quietly dump large or small amounts of benzene into my rivers over the course of any number of years, especially when that lake was held back only by a Chinese dam built in 3 days.

Aushang: Mo, 2006-02-20 14:27 | Betreff: Another chemical spill in

Another chemical spill in Sichuan. 

yahoo news

cnn

Aushang: Di, 2006-02-21 05:52 | Betreff: China warns officials against covering up pollution

Reuters has an article about China making announcements that it will punish officials for covering up environmental damage.  I don't think they will work.

China has warned local environmental protection officials that they will be punished if they allow or cover up damage to the environment in favor of economic growth, state media said on Tuesday.

Although I understand that China is a centralized government, this seems like it might be bad management practice.  Do the local environmental protection officials have any real power?  Can they do anything in practice to stop coverups?  Under this plan, it sounds like the local environmental officials have two bosses -- the governor who signs the paycheck and the central government who is threatening punishment.  It creates a question of which boss to listen to if they don't agree -- a situation that I bet will happen.  I find it strange that the Chinese government (which seems so competent at so many things) would accidentally make a mistake like this.  I think you'd want to delegate the responsibility for policing to the provinces by threatening the provincial governors with punishment and letting them figure out how to prevent this from happening.  Perhaps it's intentional, like if this is mainly a PR campaign that won't get enforced 100% of the time.  Or perhaps it's an organizational issue within the government.

Earlier this month, the watchdog named and shamed 11 companies for heavy pollution from their factories and told them to clean up offending projects or face closure and fines.

Only 11? 

The southern boomtown of Guangzhou has followed up on that policy by ordering nine major local factories, including a chemical plant on SEPA's blacklist, to move away from the city center to reduce pollution, the newspaper said.

This seems like it might create more peasant revolt down the road, since there really isn't a place for factories to go that isn't already someone's farmland.  And these are the especially heavy polluting factories that are moving.