It's minus 30 and soon there will be no heating as slick advances on city

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It's minus 30 and soon there will be no heating as slick advances on cityFrom Jeremy Page in Moscow A TOXIC chemical slick flowing into Russia from China down the Amur River is expected to reach the city of Khabarovsk today, threatening to cut off water supplies and central heating in temperatures of minus 30C (minus 22F). Last night 3,000 Chinese labourers were racing to complete a sandbag dam to protect the city’s 600,000 people and prevent the environmental disaster from souring relations between Moscow and Beijing. Russian military helicopters dropped a disused railway

carriage into the river to try and complete the 300m dam. Water experts said it would not stop the slick, which is 120 miles (190km) long, contaminating water supplies for up to a million Russians and causing long-term ecological damage. In Khabarovsk, residents have been stockpiling drinking water and food to sustain them until the slick passes in about a week. Fishing in the region may be banned for as long as four years — a huge blow to 23,000 people in fish-eating communities along the Amur. Ivan Beldy, 49, of the Nanaits ethnic minority, said his people would struggle to feed themselves over the winter. “We have lived for centuries on the Amur’s banks and now we have such terrible poisoning,” he said. “How

can we survive?” The slick entered Russia on Friday, more than a month after an explosion at a chemical plant in northeastern China dumped 100 tonnes of benzene into the Songhua River, which flows into the Amur. Hu Jintao, China’s President, has publicly apologised to Russia and his Government has sent activated charcoal and other supplies to try and limit the damage, but the disaster is testing the limits of a new strategic relationship between Moscow and Beijing. In the past year, Russia and China have held unprecedented joint war games, drawn up plans for an oil pipeline from Siberia to the Chinese border and taken a stand against the US military presence in Central Asia. Although Moscow increasingly looks to Beijing for arms, oil, investment and diplomatic support, it has reservations about the long-term consequences of China’s rise. Nowhere is that ambivalence more acute than in Russia’s Far East, inhabited by seven million people, compared with

37 million in the bordering northeastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang. Viktor Ishayev, the governor of Khabarovsk, said of the Chinese in a recent television interview: “We have become their hostages.” China presents Russia’s Far East with huge economic opportunities, as a market for its raw materials and a source of cheap labour and goods, but Russian residents, already concerned by the influx of an estimated 100,000 Chinese immigrants, are becoming increasingly anxious about the environmental impact of their neighbour’s development. China has built 16 petrochemical plants along the Songhua, according to Nikolai Yefimov, of the World Wildlife Fund’s Khabarovsk office. As a result, Khabarovsk residents can no longer swim in the Amur, tap water has become undrinkable and fish reek of chemicals. Russian authorities have been trying to organise joint monitoring of the Amur and Songhua rivers since 1997, but China has repeatedly refused, Russian water experts

say. Lyubov Kondratyeva, a water expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: “They are not open: they have very many secrets. We want to know what else is in the water, but they won’t tell us.” Mr Ishayev and other politicians in Khabarovsk have publicly accused the Chinese of withholding information, and demanded compensation for the clean-up operation. While local politicians criticise China, federal officials are much more positive, praising China for its openness. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, said yesterday: “There is no threat whatsoever for residents of these Russian regions thanks to the measures which have been taken, including measures taken in close co-operation with the Chinese side.” Aleksander Lukin, an expert on China-Russia relations at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, said the slick would worsen local anti-Chinese sentiment but would ultimately not affect Moscow’s new relationship with Beijing. “China’s

development is a great opportunity for Russia. Of course it creates problems, including ecological ones, but instead of building a great wall, the wise policy would be to use this to help Russia’s own development.”Peter H

 

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