Tainted water declared safe
- Source: Global Times
- [00:49 August 02 2010]
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By Liu Chang
Although work on a massive pollution cleanup is nearly complete, the contaminated waters of a major northeast China river are flowing into Heilongjiang Province from Jilin Province, where some 7,000 chemical barrels were swept into the river by floods last Wednesday.
Urban planning experts called for more government supervision of riverside chemical plants to prevent a similar accident in the future.
Jilin vice governor Zhu Yanfeng confirmed Sunday that 7,138 chemical barrels were swept into the Songhuajiang River Wednesday after floods hit the warehouses of two chemical companies in Jilin city.
As of Sunday, 6,387 floating barrels have been recovered and retrieval teams have located 684 others.
Environmental inspection authorities said the water quality of the river, though slightly-tainted, still meets the national standard of surface water. Previous reports said that each full barrel contained 160 kilograms of flammable chemicals.
None of the barrels has floated into neighboring Heilongjiang Province, but tests showed that contaminated water crossed the border of the two provinces Saturday, Du Jiahao, executive vice governor of Heilongjiang, said Sunday.
Dong Liming, a professor of urban and regional planning at the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University, called for more government supervision of chemical plant locations.
"The government has very specific regulations and restrictions on the location of chemical plants. The dangerous chemical plants should not be located near densely populated areas and should be at least 1,000 meters away from upstream or above-ground water sources," said Dong Liming. "We should have stricter supervision on the locations of the chemical plants."
"The system for environmental impact assessment of development plans and projects needs to be reformed to be more transparent and to require the consideration of more environmentally friendly alternatives," said Alex Wang, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) based in Beijing and the director of NRDC's China Environmental Law Project.
"The public needs to be made aware in a timely fashion of the toxic chemicals that are stored and used by enterprises in their communities," Wang added.
Xinhua contributed to this story
