Officials declared water safe for drinking yesterday in a northern Chinese city where supplies to 3.8 million people were shut down for five days after a pollution scare in a nearby river, but residents remained wary about taking their first sips.
"Harbin's water is now safe to use and drink," Xiu Tinggong, vice director of the city's health inspection bureau, said on local television. "Everybody can rest assured that the water is safe."
But many residents decided not to drink it yet, just in case.
"We still can't be sure that it's safe," said bank worker Sun Ning as she loaded a shopping cart with bottled water for her household. "It's not that we don't trust the government but we are still not totally at ease."
Running water was turned back on in Harbin, the capital of northeastern Heilongjiang province, on Sunday after supplies were shut down following a Nov. 13 explosion at a nearby chemical plant that spewed toxins in the Songhua River.
Officials initially warned that the water wasn't immediately safe to drink after lying in underground pipes for five days.
At the Jinshan Restaurant, where cooks busily stuffed and wrapped meat and vegetable dumplings, bottled water and not tap water was being used for steaming.
"It's coming out, but we don't dare use it," said chef Jin Zhonghua. Jin said he lined up each morning before 9am to fill bottles from a water truck.
Food safety officials were quoted in official media as pledging to keep fish and other aquatic products from the Songhua River off the market. Beverage makers using water from the Songhua would also face stepped up inspections for an indefinite period, the report said.
Harbin's Education Bureau instructed schools to buy "quality water" for their students or have them bring their own bottled water from home when classes resume today after a week-long break prompted by the pollution scare, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The city has about 400,000 primary and secondary school students.
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