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  Joined: 2005-10-12 Points: 65 | stipped form the BBC A blast at a Chinese plant 12 days ago sent the equivalent of 10 tanker-loads of toxic chemicals into the Songhua river, Chinese state media report. About 100 tonnes of lethal substances entered the Songhua as a result of the blast in Jilin, and the leak is now passing through the city of Harbin. All taps are off in Harbin but the water supply may be restored on Sunday after being shut down for three days. The company behind the blast has apologised for the accident. Harbin's 3.8m residents are undergoing their third day without water. 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. Levels of the chemical benzene are ten times higher than considered safe. There is plenty of bottled water, wells are being dug and supplies are being driven in. But one local paper says some people have been trying to steal water to fuel their heating systems. Another reports that inhabitants were still fishing, despite the threat to their health. Weakening threat Officials are hoping the poisonous chemicals will dissipate as they flow down the river towards Russia. The toxic leak is now expected to reach the Russian border in about two weeks. China's biggest oil company which owns the chemical plant upriver in Jilin where the explosion occurred 12 days ago has apologised. Zeng Yukang, deputy general manager of China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), expressed "sympathy and deep apologies" to the people of Harbin. Chinese state officials blamed CNPC for the contamination and defended the government's handling of the emergency. Zhang Lijun, of the environmental protection administration, said no decision had yet been made about whether to sue the company. |
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Points: 748
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.
Points: 648
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...
Points: 648
As far as those villages go, the obvious thing happened
Points: 648
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.
Points: 648
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.
Points: 648
Another chemical spill in Sichuan.
yahoo news
cnn
Points: 648
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.
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.
Only 11?
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.