Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) visited China's northeastern city of Harbin yesterday, giving a pep talk to troops delivering water-filtering materials as its 3.8 million people endured a fourth day without running water, waiting for a spill of toxic benzene in a nearby river to pass.
The government warned residents that water supplies, suspended to protect the city after a chemical plant explosion, would not resume until 11pm tomorrow, a full day later than initially planned.
Wen's surprise visit appeared to be meant both as a morale boost to government workers who have been struggling to supply residents with water by truck in sub-freezing weather and a warning to local authorities to do all they can to help the public.
The premier visited the Harbin No. 3 Water Filtration Plant, where 300 paramilitary police were delivering tonnes of carbon to filter water from the Songhua River once it is declared safe to use.
"Your work now is work to protect the safety of the masses' drinking water. Thank you, everyone." Wen told the troops outside the plant, who cheered. "Make the masses' water completely safe, and we must not allow the masses to be short of water."
Also yesterday, investigators were looking into the chemical plant explosion that the government says dumped about 100 tonnes of benzene into the Songhua. The government said on Friday that officials found responsible would be punished.
Chinese leaders "are paying close attention to this issue and are very concerned about it," said the chief investigator, Li Yizhong (
The Xinhua news agency announced that water service wouldn't resume until 11pm tomorrow in order to make sure supplies are safe.
Tests on the river found benzene levels at Harbin dropped below the official limit at 6am yesterday, Xinhua said. But it said another toxin, nitrobenzene, was still at 3.7 times the permitted level.
The disaster is an embarrassment for the government of President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), which has promised to focus on cleaning up environmental damage from 25 years of breakneck economic growth and look after the well-being of ordinary Chinese.
Government newspapers on Friday accused local officials of reacting too slowly to the Nov. 13 chemical plant explosion and criticized them for failing to tell the public the truth until this week.
The comments appeared to reflect a high-level effort to prod authorities in Harbin to do all they could to help the public and to warn officials elsewhere to prevent such disasters.
Environmentalists have accused the government of failing to prepare for such a disaster and of failing to react quickly enough. They have questioned the decision to allow construction of a plant handling such dangerous materials near important water supplies.
The plant was run by a subsidiary of China's biggest oil company, state-owned China National Petroleum Corp, which issued an apology this week and sent executives to help dig wells in Harbin.
Yesterday, residents of Harbin stood in line in sunny but sub-freezing weather to fill buckets and tea kettles with water from trucks sent by the city government and state companies. The local government has been sending out such shipments daily, and companies with their own wells have been giving away water to their neighbors.
The disaster has strained China's relations with Russia, where authorities in a city downstream from the disaster complain that Chinese officials haven't told them enough about the poisonous benzene headed their way.
The Songhua flows into the Heilong River, which crosses the border and becomes the Amur in Russia, flowing through the city of Khabarovsk.
Russian environmental officials played down the threat on Friday, but regional authorities prepared contingency plans including a shutdown of water systems in cities that drink from the river.
A UN environmental agency says it has offered to help China with the spill but has received no response.
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