A city of 3.8 million people survived its third day without tap water supply on Friday, under the help of the emergency counter plan activated for the first time in China on the serious river pollution incident in its northeast.
The density of toxic benzene was below the state safety standard in the outskirt monitoring section of Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province and used to largely rely on Songhua River that was badly polluted in a upstream chemical plant blast, China's environmental administration said Friday.
The density of another major pollutant nitrobenzene is declining, according to the bulletin released by State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) in the morning.
There is no report on anyone showing symptoms of benzene poisoning, and people's drinking need has been basically ensured after the municipal government managed to truck in nearly 1 million tons of water from adjacent regions.
"It is the first time that China launched emergency counter plans against the eruption of vital environment pollution incident," said Zhang Lijun, deputy director of SEPA.
By the end of last year, China has completed the compilation of an emergency counter plan package, including a State Council's counter plan in general, 105 specific and departmental counter plans, and local-level schemes.
The SEPA immediately launched the emergency system after a chemical plant in Heilongjiang's neighboring province of Jilin blew up on November 13, which released 100 tons of benzene-like pollutants into the river. SEPA experts have arrived in the two provinces to help dealing with the aftermath.
For Jilin, the source region of the pollution, has blocked the entry of the pollutants into the river and cautioned riverside enterprises and its downstream neighbor.
Harbin, located at the middle reaches of the river, have released statements prompting people to stock up drinking water before the four-day shutdown of city-wide water supply systems. More efforts have been taken to dig some 100 wells in addition to the current 900-odd ones to increase the output of underground water.
Measures have also been enforced to ensure the water supply for the operation of heating system in the winter season, hospital, universities, and fire-fighting.
Facing the first-ever vital environment incident, the provincial government of Heilongjiang earmarked 10 million yuan (over US$1.2 million) for the counter-pollution campaign and is gleaning some 1,400 tons of active carbon for water purification.
A round-the-clock water surveillance is underway particularly along the river's Harbin section.
Two reservoirs upstream have discharged an unusually large volume of water into the river to dilute the pollutants.
China has informed Russia of the situation and will keep doing so after the polluted water passes Harbin. The two sides are making specific arrangements for opening a hotline for the matter, officials with Chinese Foreign Ministry and SEPA pledged Thursday.
The SEPA and Heilongjiang provincial environment authority will also continue to inform the public of the latest situation on a daily basis.
"We have been working in full load," said Lin Qiang, spokesman with the provincial environment protection bureau, adding that more facilities are needed to equip new monitoring stations as the polluted water slick is moving downstream.
"It seems that we have underestimated the seriousness of possible environment incidents when we prepared the emergency counter plan," said Lin.
"There is no big trouble for us now. But if the government had informed us about their measures at an earlier time, we would have not need to rush for buying drinking water at the initial time," said Liu Zhenying, a retired Harbin citizen.
Sufficient emergency counter plans will help reduce the losses of major accidents and disasters. But State Councilor Hua Jianmin pointed out that China's fledging emergency counter plan still has to stand the test of time to be improved.
(Xinhua News Agency November 26, 2005)
