China is considering a Russian proposal to build a
temporary dam at the confluence of the Heilong and Wusuli rivers to
prevent the water source of a Russian city being contaminated,
today's China Daily quoted a local water resources official
as saying yesterday.
Khabarovsk, a major city in Russia's Far East,
relies heavily on the Wusuli River and is threatened by the toxic
spill in the Songhua River, a tributary of the Heilong River,
caused by a chemical plant blast on November 13 that released about
100 tons of benzene into it.
Sources at Heilongjiang Provincial Department of
Water Resources?said building of the dam would start on the
Fuyuan waterway, which joins Heilong and Wusuli rivers, to block
the flow of the polluted water.
The day before, the Ministry of Water
Resources sent an expert panel to Jiamusi to study the
possibility of building the dam, one of whom said the shallowness
and slow flow at the Fuyuan waterway mean the project could be
favorable.?
Also on Tuesday, Wang Wei, vice mayor of Jilin City
where the chemical plant explosion took place, was found dead at
home.
He was in charge of work safety and environment
protection and took part in rescue work after the blast, and had
insisted to journalists then that there would be no pollution from
it.
The exact reason for his death is unknown; Jilin
Provincial Department of Public Security is investigating and local
officials refused to comment.
The slick disrupted the lives of millions of
residents of cities downstream on the Songhua River and forced
Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, to cut its tap water
supply for five days.
Sangay Penjor, an Asian Development Bank senior
financial analyst, said Wednesday that a new reservoir partly
funded by them is expected to provide clean water to Harbin late
next year, 18 months ahead of schedule.
(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency
December 8, 2005)