Word: harbin
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...Downriver from the plant by 350 km lies China's eighth-largest city, Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang. Most of the surrounding province draws its drinking water from wells; in contrast, Harbin's downtown population of 3.5 million gets 90% of its water directly from the Songhua. As the slick approached, Harbin's officials announced on Nov. 21 that they would shut off the city's water for reasons of pipe maintenance. "There was no way the people were going believe that," says Xu Shijian, a 77-year-old retired Communist Party official. Like most residents, Xu stocked...
...Less than 24 hours later, Harbin came clean. A second statement, issued at 2 a.m. on Nov. 22, acknowledged that toxins had "perhaps polluted the water." At a meeting on that same day held on a first-floor conference room at Harbin's Peace Village Hotel, according to someone who was present, Heilongjiang Governor Zhang Zuoji explained to 400 local and provincial officials why Harbin had first deceived its population: his bosses at the State Council in Beijing hadn't approved an announcement on the leak. Unable to report the real reason, he said, the city of Harbin had "created...
...Harbin, a Russian-built city best known for its international ice-sculpture festival, borders the Russian Far East in Heilongjiang province, and temperatures are already well below freezing...
...Officials seemed ill-prepared for the event even though the chemical-plant explosion had occurred more than a week earlier, on Nov. 13, some 200 miles upstream on the Songhua River. On Monday, a statement from the Harbin government attributed the surprise cutoff to "water main maintenance and repair." One day later, on Tuesday, a second statement issued on the city's official Web site acknowledged that the explosion had "perhaps polluted the water" in the river...
...employee of an orphanage, the Harbin Child Welfare Institution, says a local mineral-water plant allowed him to fill several dozen vats with water shortly after the announcement was made. The children in his care should have enough water for several days. "They said we can go back and fill up again if necessary," he said. The city's Obstetrics Hospital says it still has enough water for women giving birth, but that doctors are washing their hands with dirty, used water...