Running water was restored in a major Chinese city yesterday, five days after a shutdown caused by a chemical spill, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Water supplies resumed in Harbin at 6pm, Xinhua said in a short dispatch. It did not give any more details.
Resumption of service occurred five hours earlier than scheduled, but it was not immediately clear if it would continue or if it was for the whole city.
Xu Guangwei, a spokesman for the Harbin city government, could not confirm the Xinhua report.
Water service had been suspended since Tuesday after authorities feared that the Songhua River had been contaminated by toxins spewed into the water after a Nov. 13 chemical plant explosion.
`Safe' levels
Local authorities said yesterday that chemicals in the water had fallen back to safe levels.
"Testing of the water at the water company has reached the standard [for chemical levels], so there is no problem with resuming supplies," said a spokesman for the propaganda department in Heilongjiang Province, where Harbin is located.
He would give only his surname, Lu.
Work crews were installing more than 1,000 tonnes of carbon filters at water plants in preparation for treating supplies from the Songhua River, according to state media.
The Harbin Daily warned yesterday that the water would not be drinkable -- even if it is boiled -- after service is resumed
Meanwhile, authorities in southwest China where another chemical plant accident had sparked fears of a second chemical leak said contamination of a nearby river was under control, Xinhua reported yesterday on its Web site.
State media said the blast occurred on Thursday in Dianjiang, a county in the Chongqing region, killing one worker. Schools were closed and about 6,000 people were evacuated.
More than 800 residents and Chinese Communist Party cadres were helping to clean the contaminated portion of the Guixi River using screens made of straw and activated charcoal, Xinhua said yesterday.
Water samples are being tested every four hours, it said.
"The pollution index is going down and the water quality is improving," Xinhua said. "Further spread of pollutants is under control."
The report did not say what kind of chemicals had tainted the river but said water supplies were safe.
The Harbin disaster began with a Nov. 13 explosion at the chemical plant in Jilin, a city about 180km southeast. Five people were killed and 10,000 evacuated.
But it was only last week that the government announced that the Songhua had been poisoned with benzene.
Full investigation
Premier Wen Jiabao (
Pictures of Wen visiting a water treatment plant and Harbin residents were on the front pages of newspapers in an apparent effort to assure the public of Beijing's concern for their safety.
The spill is an embarrassment to President Hu Jintao's (胡錦濤) government, which has made a priority of repairing environmental damage from 25 years of sizzling economic growth and of looking after ordinary Chinese.
Apology to moscow
Also on Saturday, the Chinese foreign minister made an unusual public apology to Moscow's ambassador to Beijing for damage caused by the benzene spill, which is flowing toward a city in the Russian Far East.
Officials in Khabarovsk were preparing emergency plans including the possible shutdown of its water system.
A senior Russian official visited the city on Saturday and said its water purification system was being quickly upgraded.
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