U.S. Water News Online
KHABAROVSK, Russia -- An environmental official said it will take years to determine the environmental impact of the toxic river spill in China that has sent residents of Russia's Far East scrambling to secure stores of potable water.
The spill on China's Songhua River is 300 miles from Russia and moving at about 0.5 mph to 1 mph, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
Oleg Mitvol, the deputy chief of the Federal Natural Resources Service, said the huge slick of benzene and other chemicals that poured into the river after a Chinese chemical plant explosion on Nov. 13 could reach Russian territory in four-five days. He told a Moscow news conference that a higher than normal level of benzene had been detected in the river but it was not determined "whether it's ours or Chinese."
"Benzene molecules don't carry passports," he said.
Mitvol said that after the toxic slick passes Khabarovsk, authorities will have to continue treating water at least until next June as ice containing benzene will melt in the spring.
Asked whether the chemical spill could be compared to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster that contaminated a large territory with radioactive fallout, Mitvol said no, but added that "the situation is extremely problematic from the point of view of ecology."
"We will be able to calculate it only in several years," he said after traveling to Khabarovsk, a city of about 580,000.
The Songhua feeds into Russia's Amur River that runs through the city of Khabarovsk, one of the largest cities in the sparsely populated Far East. With a steady snow falling, the Amur was iced over near Khabarovsk's river port, where summer vacationers and shuttle traders make trips in warmer months between China and Russia.
Residents have scooped up bottled water in stores, leaving many shops with only carbonated water. People in the city are already stocking up on water at homes, filling bathtubs and any container they can find.
City officials plan to send inspectors across the city to stop profiteering on water, Khabarovsk's DTV channel reported. Prices for bottled water have doubled in some markets.
To help purify the river water after the slick passes, the local city legislature is demanding $173.5 million from the central government, DTV television said. Authorities are using charcoal filters to cleanse tap water of the toxic chemicals.
Mitvol said that the federal government should spend millions of dollars to fund the switch to supplying Khabarovsk from the Tungussk underground reservoir.
The Amur has long suffered from pollution crossing the border from China, Mitvol said. He said that the current crisis exacerbated the already long-term presence of heavy metals and other pollutants carried from the Chinese-Russian border to the Sea of Okhotsk, near Japan.
Harbin, a Chinese city of 3.8 million people, suffered a five-day shutdown of water supplies because of the chemical spill following a Nov. 13 explosion at a chemical plant, provoking panic-buying of bottled drinking water.
The government of China's President Hu Jintao apologized to China's public and to Russia.
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