Jewish Autonomous Region controls Sungari water flow to Amur.

2/8 Tass 46

BIROBIDZHAN, August 2 (Itar-Tass) - Environment protection services of
the Jewish Autonomous Region are permanently controlling the state of
water in the Amur River and in the zone where the Sungari (Songhua) River
inflows into the Amur from China.
The regional nature resource department told Itar-Tass on Monday that
water samples there are taken daily, although the approach of hazardous
agents from the upper part of the Sungari into which barrels with toxic
chemicals were accidentally dumped, is expected on August 10-12.
The calculation is made based on the average river current speed of
3.5-4 kilometres per hour and the distance from the incident site which is
more than 1,000 kilometres. However, specialists say, the control will be
maintained also after these dates, even if the tests do not confirm the
pollution.
The incident occurred last Wednesday at 10:00, Beijing time (06:00,
Moscow time) in the Yongji country of the Jilin province, when floodwaters
washed some 7,000 barrels with poisonous chemicals from the plant's
warehouse into the Wende River, a tributary of the Sungari River.
According to information of the Chinese side, 3,000 170-kilogram barrels
were filled with trimethylchlorsilane and other hazardous chemicals, while
4,000 barrels were empty.
Itar-Tass correspondent Andrei Yevkin reports from Beijing that more
than 2,500 toxic barrels are still flowing in the waters of the Sungari.
Most of them are filled with poisonous and inflammable
trimethylchlorsilane and hexamethyldisilazane. In this connection the
operation to retrieve the barrels from the water continues. Eight floating
booms have been installed to this end downstream of the Sungari River.
Aside from emergency response services, military servicemen of the local
garrisons of the People's Liberation Army of China and the civilian
population have been engaged in the search and retrieval of the containers.
The speed of the barrels' flow down the river has increased after the
opening of the Fengman hydropower plant's dam that is located in the upper
reaches of the Sungari. Sluices downstream the river are also being opened
in order to avoid possible explosions of the barrels as a result of
collision.
According to specialists, the authorities will hardly manage to
retrieve all the balers before they reach the neighbouring province
Heilongjiang where the Sungari flows into the Amur River on the Russian
border.
It is not the first case of China's polluting the Amur waters. In
November 2005, more than 100 tonnes of benzene were washed into the
Sungari after an accident at a Jilin chemical plant. It was the largest
environmental disaster. On January 17, 2010, an explosion occurred at a
Jilin chemical plant which emitted chemical gases into the atmosphere.
-0-ezh/gor


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