VLADIVOSTOK, November 24 (RIA Novosti, Veronika Perminova) - Authorities in the Russia's far-eastern Khabarovsk Territory are considering imposing a state of emergency as heavily polluted water from China heads toward the cities on the Amur River, a local official said Thursday. A regional commission said the state of emergency could be imposed November 25 in the wake of an explosion 11 days ago at a petrochemicals plant near one of the biggest cities in China, which says it officially notified Russia about the accident on November 22, left lethal chemicals spewing into the Songhua River, a tributary of the Khabarovsk Territory's Amur River.
The Russian commission has said that the river water might freeze before it reaches the region's administrative center of Khabarovsk, which is only 30 kilometers from the border with China and has a population of about 600,000, but the appropriate measures should be taken to address the potential danger.
The November 13 blast at a chemical plant belonging to the Jilin Petroleum and Chemical Company in northeastern China led to lethal benzene spewing into the Songhua River, the main source of fresh water for the nearby Chinese city of Harbin, which itself has a population of 9 million.
