Workers retrieve a chemical container from the Songhua River at the Wukeshu Dock in Yushu City, northeast China's Jilin Province, July 29, 2010. [Xinhua]

7,000 CHEMICAL CONTAINERS WASHED INTO RIVER

Meanwhile, more than 7,000 chemical containers were washed into the Songhua River in Yongji County, Wednesday, after rain-triggered floods hit a warehouse of two chemical plants.

About 3,000 of the barrels contained 170 kilograms of chemicals each and the rest were empty, government officials said at a press conference Thursday. By 7:30 p.m. Thursday, nearly 1,500 barrels, empty or filled with chemicals, had been recovered.

The Songhua River is the largest tributary of the Heilongjiang River, a border river between China and Russia.

The incident has created fear of water contamination among residents of neighboring Heilongjiang Province on the lower reaches and prompted them to rush for bottled water.

The containers reminded the residents of a contamination of the Songhua River in 2005 after an explosion at a petrochemical plant in Jilin Province left 3.8 million people in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, without drinking water for four days.

People were gathering in grocery stores and supermarkets to buy bottled water although the governments of Harbin and Jiamusi cities along the Songhuajiang River said domestic water supplies no longer came from the river.

Prices of bottled water have surged in some wholesale markets and grocery stores after the government said the water flow would enter Harbin in five or six days.

However, Ministry of Environmental Protection spokesman Tao Detian said Thursday that a water test conducted early Thursday morning showed the river water was not contaminated.