Updating the Chinese Chemical Spill

As I reported yesterday, the Chinese government has been slow to reveal details surrounding a major chemcial spill into the Songhua River. The Chinese claim that the spill was the result of human error at a chemical plant on November 3**. The explosions released toxic chemicals into the air forcing the evacuation of 10,000 people in the immediate vicinity of the plant, which is located in Jilin. Jilin is 120 miles southeast of Harbin, which is a city of 3.8 million people that draws its water supplies from the Songhua River.

The first sign that there was something wrong downstream came not from the government, but from the stink of dead and rotting fish ahead of the tide of toxic chemicals that include benzene.

China’s central government confirmed for the first time Wednesday that the shutdown was a result of a “major water pollution incident.” Local officials earlier disclosed the reason for the shutdown, but officials in Beijing had refused to comment.

The tip-off was a trail of dead fish in the Songhua River, the official China Daily newspaper reported Thursday. It said a monitoring station found on Nov. 20 that benzene and nitrobenzene levels were far above state standards — with nitrobenzene at one point 103.6 times higher than normal.

The leak into the river began on November 3**. The Chinese are scrambling to make sure that sufficient water supplies are provided to the city. They're drilling wells to make sure that there is sufficient safe drinking water.

How many people were exposed needlessly to the tainted water upstream?

The Chinese government controls the media and all news coming out of the region, so the true extent of this environmental disaster may not be known for quite some time.

UPDATE:
The New York Times reports that the explosion took place on November 13, not November 3. The MSNBC report appears to have the wrong date. I've corrected the dates above to reflect the November 13** date as the start of the disaster. The initial explosion also killed five people and forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 in the area.

Chinese authorities are pinning the blame for the environmental disaster squarely on the China National Petroleum Corporation, which runs the chemical plant where the explosions and leaks originated.

Senior officials in Beijing today put the blame for the pollution squarely on the shoulders of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which runs the chemical plant in Jilin, 193km (120 miles) southeast of Harbin.

"We will be very clear about who’s responsible. It is the chemical plant of the CNPC in Jilin province," said Zhang Lijun, deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, who told reporters that the company might be charged with criminal responsibility.

In the meantime, is anyone going to be held responsible for not informing the Chinese people for nearly 10 days that there was an impending environmental disaster heading their way and that they should take precautions to secure drinking water in the interim?

UPDATE:
Some folks are trying to compare the environmental disaster in China with the natural disaster that resulted from the landfall of Hurricane Katrina in the US.

"This might be the water equivalent to the Chinese government that Katrina was to the United States," Lester Brown, who is also an honorary member of the China Academy of Sciences, China's top scientific institute, told AFP.

"The effects of Katrina in the United States broke all US records by several fold and was a major challenge. The US government could not mount an effective response.

"Here it is similar with up to four million people without water."

This isn't the same ballpark. It's not even the same sport. Yeah, I'd say that there's a lot in common there. Lester Brown cannot be more hopelessly wrong in his analogy.

One was a natural disaster that affected an area the size of the England (90,000 sq. miles), cut power, infrastructure, and telecommunications to millions of people. The federal government responded within 72 hours to all corners of the affected region, providing all kinds of resources. If you want to focus on the failures of the Louisiana state and local response, that's fine, but it's an incomplete view of the disaster response. Within hours of the storm passing, government agencies were responding and looking to rebuild infrastructure (some of which was repaired within days).

The other was a chemical explosion at a chemical plant that contaminated a river that serves as drinking water for millions of people. And the government failed to issue timely warnings to the people until the dead and rotting fish signalled that there was a serious problem. The Chinese government waited nearly 10 days to warn people - and it took 10 days for this crisis to make it into the government controlled media (and thereafter into our media).

In China's case, they failed to do the basic step of providing timely and accurate information. That's all the Chinese government had to do. And they couldn't even do that. And one has to wonder whether they've done everything that they could do to secure the water supplies for the affected areas.

UPDATE:
I continue to see reports today showing that the explosion took place November 3, not November 13, so one has to wonder which date is correct. I have no way to verify the date, which is why I've asterisked the dates above. Regardless of the date, we're talking about a delay of at least 10 days before the public was notified of this environmental disaster.