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Chemicals washed into major NE China river

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Workers were racing Thursday to retrieve the 3,000 chemical-filled barrels that were swept by floods into the Songhua River running through northeast China's Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces.

Chemical buckets have polluted the water after floods washed them into the Songhuajiang River July 28 in Jilin Provence. [Xinhua]

Chemical buckets have polluted the water after floods washed them into the Songhuajiang River Wednesday in Jilin Provence. [Xinhua]

Each barrel contains 170 kilograms of flammable chemical liquid, according to a press conference held by the Jilin city government Thursday. Another 4,000 empty barrels also were floating in the river.

"The barrels are well-sealed," Wang Mingchen, deputy secretary-general of the Jilin city government, said at the press conference.

There had been fears that if the chemicals leaked due to barrel damage or explosions, the water in the Songhua River, a major drinking water source of tens of millions of people in the two provinces, would be contaminated.

However, Ministry of Environmental Protection spokesman Tao Detian said Thursday that a water test conducted early Thursday morning showed the river water was not contaminated.

EMERGENCY RESPONSES

By 7:30 p.m. Thursday, nearly 1,500 barrels, empty or filled with chemicals, had been recovered.

Emergency workers on speed-boats and ferries were using poles and steel nets to collect floating barrels at a port in Yushu City, on the lower reaches of the Songhua River. Three cranes and two fire trucks were assisting on the riverbank.

The retrieved barrels in Yushu have been stored in tents, Chen Rongju, head of the city's work safety watchdog, said.

The barrels tumbled into the Wende River on Wednesday and then floated into the Songhua River after floods broke through storage facilities at two chemical factories -- Jilin Xinyaqiang Biochem Co. Ltd. and Jilin Zhongxin Group -- in Jilin City.

Of the 3,000 chemical-filled barrels, about 2,500 contained trimethyl chloro silicane -- a colorless flammable liquid -- while 500 contained hexamethyl disilazane, also a colorless liquid, officials said.

"The chemical would only cause an explosion after fully reacting with oxygen under a condition of high temperature. In this case, the chemical would not cause havoc on the river unless a large number of containers were damaged at one time," said Sun Lili, deputy general engineer with the Design and Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology in Jilin Province.

Workers are collecting the barrels at eight points on the river as officials vowed to stop the barrels from entering downstream Heilongjiang Province.

LITTLE INFLUENCE ON RIVER WATER

The 1,900-km-long Songhua River, the largest tributary of the Heilongjiang River which lies between China and Russia, is the source for drinking water for cities in Jilin and Heilongjiang.

A spokesman for Jilin city's water affairs department said tap water supplies in the city were cut Wednesday around noon, but he denied the suspension was due to fears of chemical contamination.

Rather, he said supplies were cut due to "maintenance of water supply facilities."

Water supplies in the city's urban area had "basically" resumed, said the spokesman.

A resident surnamed Zhang in Fengdian Garden of Jilin's Chuanying District told Xinhua that water supplies in his community had resumed Thursday morning and the bottled water he stored Wednesday had not been used.

Environmental workers are monitoring water quality around the clock at seven stations, officials said.

The monitoring results offered by the provincial environmental protection department have shown that "a very small quantity" of Hexamethyl disiloxane was found in the water.

"The amount of the chemical in the river can be negligible," said Sun Lili, adding that such small amounts posed no threat to area residents.

The results have also shown the pH reading in the river water remains within the normal range.

LINGERING FEARS

But panicked residents in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, have begun to store water, although the governments of Harbin and Jiamusi cities along the Songhua River said domestic water supplies no longer came from the river.

The incident has revived memories of the contamination of the Songhua River in 2005 after an explosion at a petrochemical plant in Jilin Province left 3.8 million people in Harbin without drinking water for four days.

Sales of bottled water has surged by 15 to 20 percent from late Wednesday to Thursday morning, said Huang Wenfu, deputy chief of market operations of the Heilongjiang Provincial Commerce Department.

Further, the provincial environmental protection authorities said the water flow carrying the barrels would need seven days to reach Harbin.

At the end of last year, the city closed water intakes from the Songhua River and began to pump drinking water from Mopan Mountain.

Water supplies in Harbin would not be cut, said Zhang Cheng, deputy general manger of the Harbin Water Supply Drainage Group Co., Ltd.

The daily supply from the Mopan Mountain was more than 900,000 tonnes, enough to meet the daily demand of the city's residents, who normally consumes some 700,000 tonnes, said Zhang Xinya, chairman of the water supply project company under the group.

"It's totally unnecessary to hoard water," he said.