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Russians preparing for arrival of toxic river slick

A man walks past water jerry cans in Khabarovsk, Russia, yesterday. Residents are stocking up on water because the toxic slick released last month after an explosion at a chemical factory in China entered the local Amur River on Friday. The main part of the pollution is expected to reach the city tomorrow. PHOTO: AFP

Natalya Veresova has already put a gift for her 12-year-old daughter Katya under the small Christmas tree in their two-room apartment: a bottle of clean drinking water.

"I'm ready to meet the poison," the 36-year-old school teacher says, as she gestures around at the numerous urns, canisters, buckets and basins scattered around the apartment -- all filled with water.

In this city of about 580,000 people, anticipation is building as the holidays near but it is for an event far more sobering than Christmas and New Year's.

A toxic slick of chemicals that spewed last month from an explosion at a Chinese factory upriver is predicted to arrive in Khabarovsk sometime next week and authorities are scrambling to prepare for what some residents have called a catastrophe on the scale of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

The Nov. 13 spill, which disrupted water supplies to millions of Chinese and strained relations with Moscow, reached the Amur River, along the Russian border on Friday, and was expected to reach Khabarovsk later on this week, Russian emergency officials said.

Officials say the spill's concentration has dispersed somewhat and, combined with activated charcoal donated by the Chinese government, this means they will not have to shut down the city's water.

Still, all around this city perched on the high right bank of the Amur River, about 6,100km east of Moscow, residents are preparing for the worst -- buying up bottled water, filling canisters from the taps and from outdoor ground wells, a task made more complicated by the minus 30oC daytime temperatures.

"China wants to poison us so that they can take over the Far East," said 56-year-old Alexander Shvaiko as he filled a canister from an outdoor well.

Cafes in the city have posted signs reading "Our food is prepared from clean, bottled water," and the price for bottled water sold in stores has increased markedly, despite government efforts to prevent price gouging.

Shutting off water to Khabarovsk's systems could also prove disastrous for a city where apartments and homes are heated almost exclusively by radiators and forced hot-water. Many people have started buying electric heaters, which could overload the city's power grid, officials say.

Lyubov Kondratyeva, a water expert at the local branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, accused China of deceiving Russia about the true extent of the spill and the exact nature of the chemicals, a view shared by many Khabarovsk residents.

The regional governor, Viktor Ishaev, said in televised comments recently, that residents were "China's hostages."

"China is not only hiding information, but they are misinforming us," Kondtratyeva said.

"I'm afraid to even think about the consequences if the poisonous materials nevertheless get into Khabarovsk's water," she said.
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