The mayor of Changzhi City, where a chemical leak contaminated a river in north China's Shanxi Province, has apologized for the authority's delay in dealing with the incident.
Mayor Zhang Bao made the apology at a press conference held on Monday. He said the municipal government had underestimated the severity of the chemical leak after receiving the polluter's report on the accident on Dec. 31.
The provincial environmental authority did not receive the pollution report from Changzhi City until five days later.
Such an incident should be reported to provincial authorities within two hours, under requirements.
However, when the incident became public on Saturday, about 9 tonnes of aniline had been leaked by a chemical plant owned by the Tianji Coal Chemical Industry Group into Zhuozhang River.
The contamination has affected drinking water supplies in downstream Handan City in neighboring Hebei Province, which has a population of more than 1 million people.
An initial investigation has revealed that a loose drainage valve in the plant was to blame for the leak.
Mayor Zhang Bao said the government had considered the company able to clear the pollution in a timely manner, as it only reported 1.5 tonnes of aniline leakage.
However, according to the local emergency response headquarters, in addition to the amount of chemical leaked into the river, another 30 tonnes of spilled aniline had been contained in a nearby disused reservoir.
By Sunday, the concentration of aniline in the river had decreased to 2.15 mg per liter from the previous level of 72 mg per liter. However, the river water still cannot be used for drinking by people downstream, as the national standard only allows less than 0.1 mg per liter of the substance in rivers.
During the press conference, Wang Junyan, party secretary of Tianji Coal Chemical Industry Group, also apologized for the leak.
Wang said the company lacks experience in testing, calculating and analyzing the statistics regarding the aniline leakage, which has led to the disparities between their initial reports to the government and the statistics they obtained later on.
On Jan. 4, the company reported 8.68 tonnes of aniline leakage to the government, according to Wang.
He said the company was at first unaware of the severity of the pollution, and that those responsible for the incident will be seriously punished.
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