Beijing deflects criticism
HARBIN, China – 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 on Thursday and blamed the disaster on a subsidiary of a state-owned oil company.
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.
“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. The government says all major rivers are dangerously polluted and many cities lack adequate drinking water.
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.
The chemical plant, located 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.
Authorities noticed the chemical spill after a trail of dead fish was found in the Songhua, the official China Daily newspaper reported. It said a monitoring station found Nov. 20 that benzene and nitrobenzene levels were far above state standards, with nitrobenzene at one point 103.6 times higher than normal.