China's government defended its handling of a chemical plant explosion that sent a 50-mile-long toxic slick of river water coursing through a major city Thursday and blamed the disaster on a subsidiary of a state-owned oil company.
The benzene slick on the Songhua River in northeast China flowed into Harbin days after the city of 3.8 million people shut down its water system, setting off panicked buying that cleared supermarket shelves of bottled water, milk and soft drinks. The government said it would take about 40 hours for the chemical to pass the city.
Residents stand on the banks of the Songhua River in Harbin, in northeast China's Heilongjiang province Thursday Nov. 24, 2005. The city is digging 100 new wells to provide extra water while its water supply system is shut down. City authorities shut down the water supply due to contamination of the Songhua, from which the city gets its water, after an explosion in a chemical plant in a city up river.
A government official said local leaders were warned of the chemical threat after the Nov. 13 blast that killed five people, and no one was sickened.
"It was handled properly," Zhang Lijun, deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, told a crowded news conference in Beijing. "Authorities acted that day, and not one person has been sickened."
The government did not publicly confirm that the Songhua had been poisoned with benzene until Wednesday, 10 days after the explosion. But Zhang said local officials and companies stopped using river water immediately after being told.
The disaster has highlighted the environmental damage caused by China's sizzling economic growth and the complaints that the secretive communist government is failing to enforce public safety standards.
As if to underscore the problem, another chemical factory explosion Thursday in southwest China caused officials to warn residents against drinking river water there because of fears of benzene poisoning, state media reported. The blast at the Chongqing factory killed one worker.
With its huge population, China ranks among countries with the smallest water supplies per person. Hundreds of cities regularly suffer shortages, and protests over water pollution have erupted in rural areas.
Downstream from Harbin, authorities in the Russian border city of Khabarovsk complained they had not received enough information on the threat. The Songhua flows into the Heilong River, which flows into Russia, where it is called the Amur River.
But Zhang said Beijing has shared information and might set up a hot line with Moscow. He suggested complaints were premature, saying the chemical would take two weeks to reach Russia.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said officials briefed the Russian Embassy twice this week.
"The Chinese side attaches great importance to the potential impact and harm caused by the pollution on our neighbor Russia," he said.
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