VLADIVSOTOK, December 20 (RIA Novosti, Veronika Perminova) - A toxic slick in the Russian Far East's biggest river is continuing to approach the regional center of Khabarovsk and is expected to reach the city on December 21, local officials said Tuesday.
The Amur River slick, containing potentially lethal benzene, is about 80 kilometers (50 miles) away from the regional center, which is home to 600,000.
The maximum level of benzene was registered Monday near a village on the right bank of the Amur and was .91 of the maximum allowable concentration, a spokesman for the regional branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said. However, the concentration levels had fallen to .28 of the maximum allowable concentration on Tuesday morning, the representative said, adding that tests of the water were being taken every three hours.
Meanwhile, Chinese workers have been constructing a dam designed to prevent the slick, which formed after a November 13 explosion at a petrochemicals plant in China dumped about 100 metric tons of toxic chemicals into an Amur tributary, from entering the water supply station in southern Khabarovsk.
Although Emergency Situation Minister Sergei Shoigu said Monday that he hoped water supplies to the city would avoid the fate of China's Harbin, where local residents could not turn on faucets for five days, the local administration nevertheless said increasingly more mineral and drinking water was being produced. More than 76,500 liters of drinking water have been delivered to city hospitals and schools, and local people have stocked up on potable water.
