Harbin's Water Still Unsafe To Drink

Five days after the water supplies were shut off due to a massive chemical spill in the Songhua River, the water was turned back on. Problem is that the water is still not safe to drink.

State media have accused officials of lying about and trying to conceal the spill - the result of a Nov. 13 chemical plant blast in Jilin, a city upstream from Harbin, that killed five people and forced 10,000 more to flee their homes.

But on Monday, media coverage was effusively upbeat, with newspaper photos showing smiling children in Harbin running their taps and water surging through treatment plants.

"We won!" said a headline in the newspaper Life News below a photo of the provincial governor drinking a glass of boiled tap water on Sunday.

But officials warned that the water wasn't immediately safe to drink, or bathe in, after lying in underground pipes for five days. They said they would let the public know when the water was potable again but gave no indication with that would be.

"It's back, but I don't know what I can use it for yet," said Guan Hongya, a manager for a textile company. "We can use it to flush the toilet, but otherwise it might be no good."

The spill occurred in early November (either the 3d or 13th, depending on which sources are to be believed). The story didn't break until folks began noticing the dead fish floating in the river, and the extent of the problem wasn't known until the 21st. At that point, local officials concocted a story about closing down the water supply from the river for routine maintenance.

The New York Times considers the situation in Harbin resolved:

The Ministry of Civil Affairs said it had rushed food, water and more than 6,000 tents to the region. In Harbin, city officials restarted the water system by 6 p.m. Sunday. The city's four million residents were advised to delay drinking the water until it could be flushed from the pipes after five days of disuse. Residents were advised to limit their water use for cleaning until the government posted a new advisory.

Even so, Zhang Zuoji, the provincial governor of Heilongjiang Province, which includes Harbin, was photographed drinking a glass of boiled tap water in an effort to restore the shaken public faith. "It tastes good," Mr. Zhang said.

Tests of the Songhua River, the tributary that is the city's primary water source, showed that a 50-mile slick of benzene-polluted water had passed the intake valves of the water system. A Nov. 13 explosion at a factory upstream caused more than 100 tons of benzene and nitrobenzene to spill into the Songhua. Benzene has been linked in studies to cancer.

But the responses by the government and the factory have drawn nationwide criticism as officials initially sought to conceal the pollution spill. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has promised to investigate but has made no admission of a cover-up.

Sounds to me like the situation is far from resolved. Unless and until the government takes responsibility for lying and misleading the public about the situation with the water supply, this situation is not resolved.

And that 50 mile slick of chemicals continues flowing towards the border with Russia. Many more people lie in the path of this spill, so I'd say that this crisis is far from over.