Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, will
hold its annual ice and snow festival from next month as scheduled
despite the toxic spill in the Songhua River that resulted in its
water supplies being cut for?five days in November, the city's
mayor said yesterday.
Shi Zhongxin said the water sources for ice and snow are now
safe and the activities planned to start from January 5 promise to
be well-organized and entertaining.
Workers have been extracting ice from the Jinshui River, a
distributary of the Songhua in Harbin's outskirts, and making ice
and snow sculptures for display at the festival.
According to the city tourism bureau, the festival will include
skiing games, ice-snow art shows, sports competitions and cultural
and tourism programs.
The festival debuted in 1985 and has since attracted tens of
thousands of Chinese and foreign tourists.
A chemical plant explosion upstream in Jilin Province on
November 13 caused the leak of a large amount of nitrobenzene into
the Songhua River that is still working its way out to sea.
According to yesterday's latest environmental monitoring report,
nitrobenzene levels have increased at Fujin, 65 km upstream of the
city of Tongjiang where the Songhua joins the Heilongjiang.
The report said the concentration of nitrobenzene at Fujin was
0.0709 mg per liter at 4 AM on Wednesday, compared with 0.0193 at 8
PM the day before.
(Xinhua News Agency December 15, 2005)