A chemical spill from a zinc smelter has polluted the Beijiang River in southern China’s Guangdong province, forcing the suspension of water supplies in two cities, state media said on Wednesday.
Cadmium levels reached 10 times the safety limit near Shaoguan city on the Beijiang, prompting a suspension of water supplies to the city’s 500 000 residents for much of Tuesday, the official Xinhua news agency and other media said.
Officials on Tuesday also warned about 100 000 residents of the downstream city of Yingde not to drink tap water because of the contamination.
The pollution belt had already arrived in towns north of Yingde late on Tuesday and was expected to pass through the city over the next two to three days, the agency quoted environmental-protection officials as saying.
The city government is building a 1,4km pipe to bring water from a suburban reservoir.
”The water pipe will be built up in 36 hours before the toxic stretch arrives in the urban district,” the agency quoted a Yingde government official as saying.
Water tankers and 15 fire engines have taken emergency supplies to urban parts of Yingde, it said.
The state-owned smelter in Shaoguan has halted production since environmental officials discovered the pollution, but the reports did not say when the discharge began.
The local government has already managed to reduce the density of the cadmium by increasing the discharge from reservoirs in the Beijiang’s upper reaches, Xinhua said.
The Beijiang drains into the Pearl Delta, between Hong Kong and the provincial capital of Guangzhou.
News of the pollution came as a 160km slick of benzene and other toxic chemicals continued to flow into Russia after a petrochemical accident in north-east China last month.
An explosion at a petrochemical plant in Jilin city on November 13 caused about 90 tonnes of benzene and nitrobenzene to leak into the Songhua River, which flows into Russia’s Amur River.
The catastrophe forced cities along the river, including Harbin, a city with more than three million inhabitants, to suspend water supplies temporarily. — Sapa-DPA