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Russia seeking tests of China river slick -- governor

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China is yet to give Russia permission to take samples from the Songhua River after a spill of toxic waste from a local plant last week, the head of a Russian region bordering on the Asian giant said Monday.
KHABAROVSK, August 28 (RIA Novosti) - China is yet to give Russia permission to take samples from the Songhua River after a spill of toxic waste from a local plant last week, the head of a Russian region bordering on the Asian giant said Monday.

Chinese media said last Wednesday that on August 20 the Jilin chemical plant had discharged untreated industrial waste containing highly toxic benzene derivatives into a tributary of the Songhua River, which runs into the Amur River in Russia's Far East. The reports provoked fears that a major environmental alert after an explosion last November would be repeated.

"We have not been provided information on what substances were drained into the river," said Viktor Ishayev, the governor of the Khabarovsk Territory. "Plants operating in the area of the Songhua and its tributaries are known to be producing not only coloring agents but explosives and liquid propellants as well."

Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources said last week that it had been told that coloring agents had fallen into the river, but fears remained that the potentially lethal benzene could have contaminated the water in a repeat of November's accident. A blast at a Jilin Petroleum and Chemical Company plant in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang then caused 100 metric tons of benzene to spill into the Songhua, coming close to creating an environmental catastrophe in the Russian Far East as a massive slick passed along the Amur before spilling into the Sea of Okhotsk.

Ishayev called on China's authorities to comply with international regulations of environmental cooperation.

He said a laboratory had been established under the local department of civil defense and emergency situations and that special monitoring stations had been set up along the Amur to determine the extent of water pollution.

China's Consulate General in the Russian city of Khabarovsk said last week that 10 cubic meters of waste had been drained into the river and that the authorities in Jilin had built a dam at the lower reaches of the river and packed it with absorbent carbon.

The Khabarovsk environmental committee said last week two Chinese drivers had drained the waste into the river on their way to a refinery in Jilin.

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