China: Water In City Safe To Drink

Five Days After Supplies Shut Down To 3.8M, Water Safe In Harbin

(AP) 
Premier Wen Jiabao has promised to investigate the disaster and punish those responsible. But state media also have been portraying efforts to keep this major industrial city supplied with drinking water as a triumph for the communist system.

The disaster nonetheless highlighted the costs of China's breakneck economic development, which has lifted millions out of poverty but left environmental protections in shambles.

In Russia, the nation's emergency agency said Monday it was preparing to switch off running water in affected areas and airlift activated carbon for use in water treatment facilities to help absorb the spill.

The Songhua River flows into the larger Heilong River, which is called the Amur in Russia.

Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said the pollutants could affect 70 Russian cities and villages with a total of over 1 million residents along the Amur river, including Khabarovsk, a city of 580,000.

Officials said the benzene spill was expected to reach Khabarovsk around Dec. 10.

The plant where the spill happened is operated by a subsidiary of China's biggest oil company, state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., which has apologized for the disaster.

The announcement that Harbin would suspend water service triggered panic-buying of bottled water, soft drinks and milk. Schools closed and residents stocked up on water in bathtubs and tea kettles.

But despite the initial anxiety, many took the water cutoff stoically, lining up in biting cold for supplies from trucks.

China has suffered a string of such disasters in recent years, each leading to official promises of more rigorous enforcement of environmental rules or more sensitivity to public worries.

Industrial pollution is a sensitive issue, with protests reported nationwide over complaints that factory discharges are ruining crops and local water supplies.

Protesters often accuse officials of failing to enforce environmental standards, either in exchange for bribes or for fear of harming economic growth. The government says all major rivers are dangerously polluted, threatening water supplies for millions.

With its huge population, China ranks among countries with the smallest water supplies per person. Hundreds of cities regularly suffer water shortages.