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River thaw will not release pollutants
By Zhao Huanxin (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-01-25 05:56
Residents along the Songhua River in Northeast China received a reassuring
Spring Festival gift yesterday from the country's environmental chief, who said
they can safely consume its fish and drink from groundwater wells.
"The water quality of the Songhua River will not exceed national standards on
a large scale during the spring thaw, and fish in the river and from pounds
along the banks are safe to eat," State Environmental Protection Administration
Minister Zhou Shengxian told a press conference in Beijing.
A view of Songhua River in the Jilin section,
northeast China's Jilin province January 24, 2006.
[newsphoto] |
Except for trace amounts of nitrobenzene well below the national permissible
standard for drinking water that were detected in individual wells, the area's
groundwater is safe for drinking, Zhou said.
There had been mounting concern among some people that the spring thaw will
release nitrobenzene trapped in the ice and in the sediment of the river
following the November blast at an upstream chemical plant of the Jilin
Petrochemical Corp, which spewed 100 tons of pollutants into the water.
But Zhou said research had indicated only a small amount of the toxic
chemical had been frozen in the ice. Equally limited is the amount of the
compound entrapped in the sediment because the riverbed consists largely of
sand.
These factors, along with the fact that the river will become a torrent when
ice melts in the spring, convinced experts of the safe water quality, Zhou said,
citing an interim assessment of the river spill done by a host of Chinese
institutions and agencies, which started on December 13.
Chen Jining of Tsinghua University's Institute of Environmental Science and
Engineering, said: "Even in the rare cases when levels are beyond standards in
some places, we also have the technology in place for example, activated carbon
to ensure safe drinking water supplies."
The Jilin company is a firm under the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC). A
special team has been set up to investigate any connection between the blast and
the CNPC, Zhou revealed.
Xie Zhenhua, Zhou's predecessor, resigned after the accident.
"The team is working hard, and as soon as results are available, they will be
released to the public through the media," Zhou said.
Besides water quality, Zhou also guaranteed that livestock along the river
banks and their products are safe to eat, and using the water of the Songhua
River for irrigation will not inhibit the growth of crops.
Zhou said China will further implement the joint monitoring programme with
Russia on boundary rivers. Experts predicted the front of the pollution plume
would reach the estuary of the Armur River in Russia by the end of this month.
Fan Yuansheng, a division director of the environmental agency, said
yesterday that China has upgraded its pollution control programme for the
Songhua River, focusing on water sources of large and medium-sized cities along
the river.
Through building waste water and sewage treatment facilities, promotion of
clean production methods and other pollution control efforts, the country will
strive to make 90 per cent of the water in the Songhua River drinkable within
five years, Fan said.
Drawing lessons from the Songhua incident, Zhou's agency has begun surveying
China's 21,000 chemical enterprises, more than half of which are located along
the country's two major river basins, the Yellow and Yangtze. Many of the plants
had not undergone environmental impact assessment and were built in residential
areas or upstream from rivers, according to the survey.
(China Daily 01/25/2006 page1)
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