80-kilometer pollution slick reaches Harbin city
(Xinhua/AFP/China Daily)
Updated: 2005-11-24 15:25

The city's 918 wells are all in operation and teams from Daqing Oilfield are drilling another 100 wells, said Wang Zhengbang, deputy secretary of the Harbin municipal government.

Dead fish can be seen in the Songhua River as the State Environment Protection Administration confirmed Wednesday that pollutants containing benzene and nitrobenzene contaminated the river after a chemical-plant blast at the upper reaches in Northeast China. [newsphoto]

The government has designated 10 hospitals to treat patients in case they drink contaminated water.

10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) has been earmarked to deal with emergencies; and 1 million yuan (US$120,000) allocatedto help the poor, elderly and those living alone.

As for cities and counties downstream of Harbin, 90 per cent rely on groundwater as the main water source, said Dong Shuhua, director of the Heilongjiang Water Information Bureau.

"They will not be very much affected."

Government, company apologize for the spill

The Party head of Jilin City, and the plant's owner, PetroChina Company Ltd, have apologized to Harbin citizens for water pollution, Beijing News reported on Thursday.
PetroChina has offered 60 water tankers to Harbin and helped to dig wells for ground water.

People in Jilin Province seldom drink water from the Songhua, but 90 percent of the drinking water in Harbin comes from it, said Zhai Pingyang, an official of Heilongjiang environment institute.

He said many chemical plants beside the Songhua in Jilin Province had been pouring polluted water into the river for decades and the two provinces had negotiated about the situation many times.