The second coming of nitrobenzene

The governor of the Khabarovsk Territory is surprised by the haste of the Chinese

On the eve of President Vladimir Putin’s official visit to Beijing, authorities in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang bordering Russia began dismantling the protective dam on the Amur River near Khabarovsk, built last December after an accident at a Chinese chemical plant in Jilin. Then hundreds of tons of nitrobenzene entered the Sungari River, a tributary of the Amur. It was decided to build a dam in the Kazakevichev channel in order to prevent the penetration of harmful impurities contained in the nitrobenzene stain into the water intakes of the southern part of Khabarovsk. At the same time, the Russian Foreign Ministry gave the go-ahead for the construction of a dam, which was supposed to connect the Russian island of Tarabarov with the Chinese coast, only on the condition that this hydraulic structure was destroyed by the Chinese authorities immediately after the need for it disappeared.

Perhaps, the voice of Russian diplomats in this matter was taken into account for the last time. In a few years, the Kazakevichev channel, which now separates the islands at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers near Khabarovsk from the Chinese coast, will still become the internal water artery of the PRC. This will happen after the border is demarcated in accordance with the Russian-Chinese agreement signed in October 2004 in Beijing. The islands were divided approximately in half, with all of Tarabarov and part of Bolshoy Ussuriysk going to China. In 2005, this agreement was ratified by Russian parliamentarians.

On March 18, Deputy Minister of Natural Resources of the Khabarovsk Territory Sergei Andrienko told reporters that the work to eliminate the dam will be carried out by the Chinese in two stages. The first - its undermining - ended yesterday. At the second stage, with the help of dredging equipment and the forces of soldiers of the People's Liberation Army of China (who, by the way, built this dam), the bed of the Kazakevichev channel will be cleared. This will take about two months.

Consent to dismantling the protective dam on the Kazakevichev channel was given by the Russian government. However, the governor of the Khabarovsk Territory, Viktor Ishaev, on behalf of the regional authorities, called this decision premature. In his opinion, the Russian authorities, when making this decision, took into account exclusively the political factor, ignoring the need to take care of people’s health. Previously, representatives of the Chinese authorities assured that they would begin to dismantle the dam on the Kazakevichev channel only after the spring flood on the Sungari and Amur rivers had passed, in order to protect residents of Russian cities from re-contamination with the products of the accident at the chemical plant in Jilin.

Therefore, the decision to urgently dismantle the dam on the eve of the Russian president’s visit causes bewilderment in the Khabarovsk Territory. And although, as the governor noted, in the samples of water, ice and bottom sediments that Russian and Chinese scientists took in Heilongjiang province, excesses of the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) for nitrobenzene, benzene and toluene were not detected, experts are seriously concerned about the upper reaches of the Songhua River. Firstly, Russian experts were not allowed to the site of the accident itself. Secondly, this section of the river was subject to the most significant contamination with chemical compounds.

According to the General Administration of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China, during the passage of the toxic spot, the concentration of harmful impurities in the Jilin-Harbin section was eighty times higher than the maximum permissible standards. And if below Harbin the Chinese washed the bed of the Songhua with powerful discharges of water from numerous reservoirs, then in the upper reaches of the river there was no such dilution. Therefore, it is possible that with a flood, toxic chemicals that have settled on the ice and shore will again enter the water. Now the authorities of the Khabarovsk Territory are seeking additional financial resources to overcome the possible consequences of repeated nitrobenzene pollution of the Amur. A strategic water reserve is being created again in the city and nearby villages.

Mr. Ishaev, in a conversation with journalists, expressed hope that this spring it will be possible to avoid a repetition of the situation in November-December, but it is still necessary to prepare for the worst. And if in December large-scale water supply outages in Khabarovsk were avoided thanks to the protective properties of the dam that blocked the Kazakevichev Channel, then in April the poisonous spot will no longer have such a barrier.

Ilya SERGEEV, Khabarovsk region