River of toxins heads for city without water

HARBIN, a Chinese city of nine million people, yesterday temporarily restored water supplies to allow residents to stock up as a wave of polluted river water flowed towards the area.

China confirmed earlier in the day that an explosion at a petrochemical plant had caused "major pollution" of the Songhua River, from which Harbin, the capital of north-eastern Heilongjiang province, draws its drinking water.

The provincial government said a 50-mile stretch of heavily polluted water would reach the city at 5am today and flow past on Saturday, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Airports and train stations in Harbin were reportedly packed yesterday as people tried to leave the city.

The polluted water has nearly 30 times more than the normal level of chemicals containing benzene, an industrial solvent and component of petrol, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) said.

The decision to shut down the city's water was taken after an explosion which occurred ten days ago at the PetroChina Jilin petrochemical plant in the city of Jilin, 236 miles upriver of Harbin. It killed five people and forced the evacuation of 10,000 neighbouring residents.

Initially, reticent local authorities blamed "water main maintenance and repair" for the sudden dry up. Then on Tuesday it was acknowledged that the explosion might have polluted the river. Finally yesterday, SEPA in Beijing confirmed that the Songhua had suffered "major water pollution".

Though no stranger to environmental crises of this scale - the annual flooding of the Yangtze routinely affects millions of people - the initial secrecy surrounding the government's actions is likely to arouse anger and will not have helped calm an already jittery population.

Hoping to dilute the spill, reservoirs are being emptied and purifying chemicals are being readied to dump into the river as the pollution passes through Harbin.

Russia's environmental protection agency said it was worried that the pollution could affect drinking water supplies in its Khabarovsk region, which the Songhua enters several hundred miles downstream from Harbin.

Yuri Trutnev, the Russian minister of natural resources, was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying Russia would take all necessary steps to protect people in Khabarovsk. "But so as to make sure these measures are effective, we need more information from the Chinese. We need to more accurately know the make-up of the pollutants," he said.

Prices of bottled water in Harbin have soared and state media said shops had been ordered to restore prices to normal to prevent panic buying.

Amid fears that the city's generators would have to shut down as winter temperatures reach -20C, the Harbin government closed all schools, and told hospitals to be on alert.