China defends way it handled pollution

A second chemical factory exploded Thursday.
HARBIN, China (AP) -- 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 a subsidiary of a state-owned oil company for the disaster.
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.
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.
Official's comments
"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.
Russia concerned
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.
Plant details
The chemical plant, in Jilin, a city about 120 miles southeast of Harbin, is operated by a subsidiary of China's biggest oil company, state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. Benzene is used in the manufacture of plastics, detergents and pesticides.
"We will be very clear about who's responsible. It is the chemical plant of the CNPC," Zhang said, adding it hadn't been decided if the company might face criminal charges or fines.
Zeng Yukang, deputy general manager of CNPC, expressed "sympathy and deep apologies" late Thursday to the people of Harbin for the incident, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Environmentalists criticized the government for not taking action and informing the public sooner.
"Careful environmental evaluation should have been made to avoid building dangerous factories near residential areas and water sources in the first place," said Xue Ye, general secretary of the Chinese group Friends of Nature.
Clean water
In Harbin, the city government tried to reassure the public by announcing it was trucking in millions of bottles of drinking water and digging 100 new wells. The city already has 917 wells serving hospitals and some residential areas.
On Thursday, thousands of one-liter bottles of drinking water stood in huge stacks outside wholesale shops. Families bought them by the dozen to take home by bicycle, while sidewalk vendors pushed carts straining under hundreds of bottles.
One shop owner, who would give only her surname, Jiang, said her sales had doubled to 25,000 bottles a day at 12 cents a piece. Authorities froze prices to prevent overcharging.
Jiang, standing outside her shop in a brisk wind and subfreezing temperatures, said distributors were bringing in extra supplies.
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