KHABAROVSK, December 16 (RIA Novosti)-The authorities in the Russian Far East have done everything possible to reduce the risk of an environmental disaster when a slick of highly toxic chemicals from an industrial accident in China arrives in the region along its biggest river, the emergency situations minister said Friday.
"The authorities have done everything possible to minimize the aftermath of this environmental disaster," Sergei Shoigu, who is currently in the area, told local representatives of this ministry. "All the wells for testing water have been checked and are ready for work, all the necessary amounts of activated charcoal to clean the water of benzene are ready in reserves, and all the structures have clear action plans for a potential emergency situation."
Shoigu said that the polluted slick, which formed after about 100 metric tons of chemicals were dumped into a Chinese tributary of the Amur River after a November 13 explosion at a petrochemicals plant, had now entered the Russian river. But he gave assurances that the faucets in local cities such as Khabarovsk, which is home to 600,000 people, would only be turned off in an emergency. Although the Chinese authorities cut off the water in the major city of Harbin for four to five days, Shoigu said this was not yet an issue for Russia.
The minister also said that more water had been released from reservoirs in a bid to dilute the chemicals and break up the approaching slick, and that 1,000 monitors had been deployed to track the situation.
However, Shoigu also struck a note of caution in that he said ministry experts were more worried about the potentially lethal chemicals turning into ice in the Amur and its tributaries, which could cause serious difficulties in the spring.
