Chinese Waters.

Georg Blume, correspondent of the German weekly journal "Die Zeit", has been arrested by the police during enquiries in a village at a heavily contaminated river in central China. Blume reported via telephone he was accused of illegal interviews. He was restrained in a hotel in the city of Shenqiu for five hours, during which he was questioned repeatedly. The journalist had investigated in one of twenty villages along the severely contaminated river Shaying. In these villages the number of people suffering from cancer has risen dramatically since the 90's. In Huangmengying, a village with 2400 residents, more than 120 people already died from cancer.
The environmental disaster in northern China, where a 100 km long section of the river Songhua was contaminated by chemical accident, triggered public notice of water pollution in China. In the metropolitan city of Harbin water supply had to be switched off for five days. The doom of the cancer villages even gets discussed in state controlled Chinese media. The mayor of Huangmengyin accuses a paper mill and other industrial firms of ruthlessly discharging uncleaned sewage into the river. Particularly people obtaining their drinking water from the river are suffering from bowel and gullet cancer. That is the downside of China's economy boom - chemical plants feeding poisonous wastewater into the rivers. And since that's business as usual, the chronically arid China impends to die from this fatal cloaca. Peking does know all that and has invested hundreds of millions US$, but the money mysteriously disappeared - an estimated two thirds of all implemented action only exists on paper, the money draining away in the greedy pockets of local politicians and contractors. However, experts aren't surprised by these disasters. Industry booms tremendously, pollution control is non-existant, as is precaution. About 70 per cent of chinas rivers are polluted. Acid rain is falling because the air is so poisoned. Seven of the world's ten most polluted cities are located in China, the International Energy Agency states.
The Harbin disaster was no surprise - 100 tons of benzene leaked into the river after a petrochemical plant exploded. Jorg Wuttke of BASF in China finds that unbelievable: "100 tons are usually never kept at one place. That's a huge amount! You'd reduce highly explosive substances to the bare minimum, you'd store them away from the actual production facilities and add them as you need them." Here the whole thing just blew up. However, the plant - being one of the wealthiest companies in China - was brand new. It had just started production. Wuttke is puzzled there wasn't any precaution, no security measures present. "It was built that if something happens, there would be maximum damage". The poisoned river heads towards Russia...