A toxic slick on the Beijiang River has caused
Yingde, a city of 1.06 million people in south China’s Guangdong
Province, to go on high alert, Xinhua News Agency reported
today.
Environment protection departments said a
state-owned smelting plant in Shaoguan City, about 90 km north of
Yingde, had discharged cadmium into the river, making levels there
nearly 10 times the national safety standard and "seriously
endangering" water safety along the river's lower reaches.
It was not yet clear when the discharge took place
but Yingde’s city environment protection office said the polluted
stretch arrived at Shakou Town by 10:30 PM on Tuesday and was
expected to arrive in central Yingde in two or three days.
It added that this could result in the water supply
for 100,000 residents being shut off.
People living north of Baishiyao hydropower plant
were warned not to drink tap water, according to a TV government
announcement yesterday evening.
The provincial environment protection department
said people's lives had so far remained normal along the
470-km-long Beijiang, which runs north to south into the Pearl
River and is the major source of drinking water for Yingde. It
provides 6 billion cubic meters of water annually to northern
Guangdong.
Yingde has begun to build a 1.4-km-long pipe
linking with the supply line of a suburban reservoir to provide
clean water directly to the city center.
"The water pipe will be built in 36 hours before
the toxic stretch arrives in the urban district," said a Yingde
government official.
Water vehicles, including 15 fire engines, have
been used to convey drinking water to the city center, and local
environmental authorities have established a dozen monitoring
stations along the Beijiang.
"We are required to take water samples for
examination every two hours and so far, the water quality is OK,"
said He Yuanhang, a Baishiyao Hydropower Plant worker at the water
quality monitoring station in Yingde.
A waterworks several kilometers north to the power
plant halted supplies last Sunday, said He.
The smelting plant responsible has ceased operating
and closed the wastewater outlet blamed for the discharge,
according to Shaoguan’s environment protection office.
The provincial environment protection office said
cadmium levels had continued to fall since the local government
began to dilute the river’s water with that from reservoirs
upstream.
Meanwhile in the northeast, the toxic river slick
there has passed Tongjiang where the Songhua River joins the
Heilong River bordering China and Russia. The State Environmental
Protection Administration reported yesterday that nitrobenzene
levels there had fallen to 0.0152 mg per liter by 10 PM on
Monday.
(Xinhua News Agency December 21, 2005)