China Quick to Offer Details on New Spill

The Chinese government provided details Friday of its efforts to contain the second major environmental disaster to hit the country’s waterways in little more than a month.

State media reported that authorities had sealed dams and pumped neutralizing chemicals into the Bei River in the wake of a toxic spill Tuesday from a smelter in southern China’s Guangdong province, where thousands of factories make up the manufacturing hub of a booming export-driven economy.

As the spill threatened Guangzhou, the provincial capital north of Hong Kong, the gates of two dams downstream from the accident were closed for the cleanup effort, Wang Zhensheng, a local official, told the state-run China Daily.

Zhang Weijian, director of the smelter, was fired, the official New China News Agency said.

The latest water crisis came as the country was still reeling from a chemical explosion in the northern city of Jilin last month that dumped 100 tons of carcinogenic benzene and other compounds into the Songhua River. About 3.8 million people in the downstream city of Harbin were left without tap water for nearly a week.

That leak has crossed the border into Russia, and Beijing has been forced to apologize to Moscow.

Water pollution is a problem in China. By their own admission, Chinese authorities are unable to provide safe drinking water to about 360 million people, with much of the tainted water blamed on industrial pollution.

Environmentalists say many more rivers are being poisoned in the country’s relentless drive for economic progress. Often, they say, the contaminations go unreported because of local protectionism and ignorance.

The fact that the Guangdong case came to light quickly is due in part to lessons learned from the Harbin water debacle. Authorities there waited 10 days before informing the public.

“It’s progress that they were more willing to report the problem,” said Wen Bo, the representative in Beijing for the San Francisco-based environmental group Pacific Environment. “Too many factories are dumping chemicals into rivers. The government can’t monitor them all. What we need is more public awareness to prevent these disasters.”