Another toxic spill is reported in China By Joe McDonald, Associated Press | December 22, 2005 BEIJING -- A city in southern China shut down running water for eight hours after a smelter dumped chemicals in a river, residents said yesterday, a month after a toxic spill in a northeastern river disrupted water supplies to millions. The two spills highlighted China's chronic environmental problems and the precarious state of its scarce water supplies. The latest spill occurred on the Bei River in Guangdong, China's most densely populated province with more than 100 million people and a center for its export-driven manufacturing industries. Running water in Shaoguan, 150 miles north of Hong Kong, was shut off Tuesday from about 9 a.m. to about 5 p.m., according to employees of three downtown hotels. ''Today, everything is back to normal," said a woman who answered the phone at the city's Hotel de Royce. She would give only her surname, Li. China has suffered a series of such disasters, often blamed on lack of safety equipment or officials' refusal to enforce environmental rules that might hurt businesses. The accidents are an embarrassment to the government of President Hu Jintao, which has promised to clean up environmental damage from China's 25 years of breakneck economic growth. Last month, a chemical plant explosion in China's northeast spewed 100 tons of benzene, nitrobenzene, and other toxins into the Songhua River, a key water source for millions of people. The city of Harbin shut down running water to 3.8 million people for five days. The Songhua flows into the Heilong River, which carried the toxins into Russia. Tuesday's water shutdown in Shaoguan came after the government said a smelter dumped toxic chemicals into the Bei, causing levels of the heavy metal cadmium to jump to 10 times acceptable levels. ------------------------------------- After crackdown, fear prevails Defiance wanes in Chinese town By Edward Cody, Washington Post | December 22, 2005 SHANWEI, China -- Two weeks after a protest that culminated in gunfire and bloodshed, the rebellious farmers and fishermen of Dongzhou have been reduced to submission. Authorities have sealed off the seaside village and flooded its streets and lanes with police patrols, residents said, and an unknown number of men have been summoned by a knock on the door and hauled away for interrogation. As a result, the spirit of defiance that pushed several thousand villagers to clash with riot troops and People's Armed Police on Dec. 6 has been replaced by fear, foreboding, and resentment, according to conversations with a number of residents. Normal life has been suspended inside the community, they said, and outsiders who approached Monday were halted by police at a barrier with a sign that read: ''Entry Not Allowed." ''We seldom go outside our houses anymore," said a villager contacted by telephone. ''We seldom talk to other villagers. People are afraid to, because the police are patrolling all around the village. We are afraid that if we get together they might arrest us for some reason or another." The crackdown by officials in Dongzhou, on the southeast edge of Shanwei city about 125 miles northeast of Hong Kong, was similar to the response by authorities to riots that have erupted with increasing frequency across China over the past two years, according to accounts by witnesses and participants. After setting up an investigation, police typically pay rewards to those willing to denounce their neighbors. Protesters have described being taken into custody and suffering excruciating pain at the hands of interrogators who try to force them to admit criminal actions during the rioting. The Shanwei government, which administers Dongzhou and surrounding areas, has promised to improve social services for villagers, but has not offered any concessions on the dispute that led to the riot: land confiscations to make way for a new power plant. Instead, villagers said that local officials repeatedly have broadcast messages over street-corner loudspeakers urging residents to rally to the police, trust the government, and stop being led astray by protest leaders. The Public Security Ministry has acknowledged that the number of riots has risen sharply in China, reaching more than 70,000 in 2004 and developing into a major concern for the government. But the violence in Dongzhou stood out because police used their guns. Most of the recent uprisings have been suppressed by riot police armed with tear gas and truncheons. People's Armed Police, who carry automatic weapons, rarely have been deployed to suppress protests. Witnesses reached by telephone estimated the number killed was between 10 and 20. The Shanwei government at first denied that police opened fire on Dec. 6. Then city officials issued a statement on Dec. 10 saying police fired warning shots that in the chaos accidentally killed three villagers. --------------------------------------- Chemical spill viewed as Chinese ploy By Yuras Karmanau, Associated Press | December 22, 2005 NIZHNESPASSKOYE, Russia -- Bad fortune has floated down the river to Yekaterina Vityuk's wooden cottage. Blocks of ice hide the toxic benzene slick, but the 74-year-old woman, who has lived her whole life on the banks of the Amur River, can't erase it from her mind. She cannot fish, or wash, or invite her relatives to stay. ''The Chinese have poisoned my life," she said with a sigh. After weeks of frantic efforts to minimize the effects on the 580,000 residents of Khabarovsk, officials say the chemical spill from a Chinese factory upriver could reach city limits as early as today. Workers from the Emergency Situations Ministry have set up camp next to Vityuk's village of Nizhnespasskoye, 50 miles from Khabarovsk, to monitor the ecological damage from the Nov. 13 spill. Every three hours, scientists drill holes in the river ice and draw water into bottles suspended on strings. As prosecutors look on, they seal the samples and send them to Khabarovsk for analysis. ''I have nothing comforting to say," said Yevgeny Rozhkov, an engineer from the Far East Meteorological Agency. ''Other than benzene and nitrobenzene, we've found chlorine and phenol." Khabarovsk regional Governor Viktor Ishayev has accused China of withholding information on the chemicals released in the spill. Rozhkov said the situation could be worse than the water samples indicate because benzene and nitrobenzene are heavier than water and are settling on the river bottom or sticking to the ice. ''We are not yet registering a critical level of nitrobenzene in the water, but come spring this region will have a lot of unpleasantness in store," he said. The melting ice will pollute not just the water, but also river banks, he said. Khabarovsk authorities cut off water supplies to 10,000 people in southern districts early yesterday, then restored some in the evening. Residents of the three southern districts awoke to find notices posted outside their apartment blocks with a list of hazardous chemicals that could be in the water supply and their effects. A top regional environmental official warned all 580,000 residents of the city not to drink tap water. ''We don't know how the situation will develop," said Vladimir Ott, the regional chief of Russia's Federal Natural Resources Service. Since news of the spill, Russia has tried to minimize the effect on Khabarovsk by building temporary dams and using tons of charcoal to filter the water of the Amur River. Upriver, Chinese workers were rushing to finish a temporary dam on a waterway along the Heilong River, which merges with another river to form the Amur, a Chinese official said Tuesday. The chief psychologist in the Khabarovsk regional public health department, Yelena Panchenko, advised people not to panic. ''There's no need to read the newspapers or watch talk shows," she said on local television. ''You need to trust official information and then you'll avoid stress." Frightened residents of Nizhnespasskoye followed the spill's progress on central Russian television channels -- all state controlled. Alexei Kulov, 63, compared the situation to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which Soviet authorities covered up for days. ''Then the authorities were also reassuring people and saying that nothing terrible had happened," he said. Still, he said he wouldn't stop fishing despite a ban authorities say could last as long as two years. ''Fish smelled like medicine before this, but I ate it and I'm still alive. Anyway, there's nothing else to eat," Kulov said. Vityuk, by contrast, is taking precautions. She collected as much water as she could before the spill arrived and has brought her chickens inside her cottage. From the dark streets of Nizhnespasskoye, which does not have a single street light, villagers can see the bright, multicolored lights of the Chinese city of Fuyuan across the river. ''The Chinese are just waiting for us to die so they can settle on Russian land," said Sergei Pomerantsev, 57, voicing a widely held conviction here that the Chinese are purposely poisoning Russians. ''Every year, there are more and more Chinese, and fewer and fewer Russians," he said. ------------------------------------------- Dam stops toxic river spill in China By Joe McDonald, Associated Press Writer | December 23, 2005 BEIJING --A toxic river spill flowing toward China's southern business capital of Guangzhou has been stopped by a dam as the government rushed to protect water supplies to the city of 7 million people, a news report said Friday. Authorities closed the Baishiyao Dam at the city of Yingde, about 60 miles north of Guangzhou, to trap the spill of cadmium flowing down the Bei River, the China Daily newspaper reported, citing local officials. "Water in the lower stream is safe," a local official, Wang Zhensheng, was quoted as saying. Wang said another dam downstream also was closed and authorities planned to discharge water from a reservoir to dilute the chemical. The cadmium dumped into the Bei by a smelter is China's second environmental disaster in six weeks, following a spill of benzene in a northern river that disrupted water supplies to millions of people. The benzene slick arrived Thursday in the city of Khabarovsk in Russia's Far East. In China, the cadmium spill occurred in one of the country's most densely populated areas, Guangdong Province, which is home to thousands of factories that form the heart of China's thriving export industries. Yingde and another city farther upstream already have stopped using water from the river. The Bei flows into the Pearl River, which passes through Guangzhou before emptying into the South China Sea west of Hong Kong. The Baishiyao Dam in Yingde and the Feialixia Dam downstream will stay closed until the water returns to "safe levels of toxicity," but the government hasn't said when that will be, the China Daily said. Wang said that farther upstream, officials in charge of the Mengzhou Dam were preparing to release 100 billion gallons of water to dilute the cadmium, according to the report. The twin accidents are an embarrassment to President Hu Jintao's government, which has promised to clean up environmental damage from China's 25 years of breakneck economic growth. Cadmium is a bluish-white metal found in lead and zinc ores. Exposure to it can cause lung and prostate cancer, kidney damage and bone disease, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.