Saturday, July 28, 2007
Lead-zinc spill cuts water supplies in central China (9:35 p.m.)
BEIJING -- A lead-zinc spill into a river in central China, which cut water supplies to more than 200,000 people for one day, a state news agency said.
This incident is the latest river poisoning to hit the country.
Residues from a local lead-zinc mine polluted the Zijiang river in Hunan province on Thursday, cut water supplies to a riverside city, Lengshuijiang, and the downstream county with a combined population of 200,000, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
It said 30,000 cubic meters (39,238 cubic yards) of lead-zinc residue were washed into the river after a culvert under a tailings dam at the private Zhongtai Mining Corp. collapsed.
There were no casualties in the culvert collapse, Xinhua quoted Xie Li of the provincial environmental agency as saying.
It was the second such accident in Lengshuijiang. In 2005, a fertilizer maker accidentally spilled 100 cubic meters (130.80 cubic yards) of ammonia nitrate into the river. Also in 2005, a chemical plant spew tons of toxic nitrobenzene and other chemicals into north China's Songhua river, forcing authorities to temporarily cut supplies of running water to millions of people. (AP)
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