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Toxic water crisis easing for China's Harbin city
Is this the cost of progress? And can these disasters be prevented?
A while ago I wrote a short article on Tambogrande, a town in the middle of Peru's northern desert, of historical and agricultural value for the entire province. A Canadian mining company found gold in Tambogrande, and proposed a mine which in order to mine the gold, had to destroy the town. The mining company ensured the residents that the only river, sustaining the fragile environment of the province, was not going to be contaminated. The residents demonstrated the opposition, which resulted with the "unresolved" death of a geologist and one of the town's leader.
The question is, can the environment in which all live depends on, be subservient to economic "progress" and how do we measure the progress of an already damaged ecology?
Toxic water crisis easing for China's Harbin city
Reuters. Sat Nov 26, 2005
By Chris Buckley
A while ago I wrote a short article on Tambogrande, a town in the middle of Peru's northern desert, of historical and agricultural value for the entire province. A Canadian mining company found gold in Tambogrande, and proposed a mine which in order to mine the gold, had to destroy the town. The mining company ensured the residents that the only river, sustaining the fragile environment of the province, was not going to be contaminated. The residents demonstrated the opposition, which resulted with the "unresolved" death of a geologist and one of the town's leader.
The question is, can the environment in which all live depends on, be subservient to economic "progress" and how do we measure the progress of an already damaged ecology?
Toxic water crisis easing for China's Harbin city
Reuters. Sat Nov 26, 2005
By Chris Buckley
find this article: http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=uri:2005-11-26T061807Z_01_RID324277_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-WATER.xml&pageNumber=1&summit=HARBIN, China (Reuters) - A surge of toxic chemicals pouring down the river through a northeastern Chinese city was expected to have passed through by early Sunday morning, bringing respite from a water crisis that has plagued residents.
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The pipe network was shut down on Tuesday evening to protect Harbin residents from up to 100 tons of cancer-causing benzene compounds spilled into the Songhua river from which Harbin pumps its water. An explosion at a chemical plant upstream triggered the release of the toxins.
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The crisis has raised questions about the environmental costs of China's economic boom. Around 70 percent of China's rivers are contaminated, and the State Council, or cabinet, recently described the state of the country's environment as "grim".
"This is going to encourage the people to have higher expectations. People are increasingly concerned about environmental issues...and this will be another stimulus," said Zhang Wei, an expert on environmental issues and the media.
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"What if this happens again? This is a long-term threat," said Wang, the restaurant owner.
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