Water cut to north China city after chemical spill

BEIJING (Reuters) - Water supplies were cut in parts of the northeastern Chinese city of Jilin on Thursday, after a flood washed thousands of barrels of a dangerous chemical from a factory into the area's main river, state media said.

After the accident tap water supplies were stopped in Jilin, the official Xinhua agency said, though residents reached by telephone on Thursday morning said water had been restored to some districts.

Xinhua later confirmed water supplies had been restored, citing unnamed sources as saying it was due to "repair of water supply facilities".

Downstream in Harbin city -- where the barrels could arrive in the next day if they are not picked up first -- "panicked residents" were buying up bottled water, even as the government assured people water supplies were uncontaminated, Xinhua added.

"No chemicals had been detected in the river water," it quoted environment ministry spokesman Tao Detian as saying.

In Jilin a "small quantity" of two pollutants produced by the plant were found in the Songhua River, and a reporter smelt a strange odor as he watched dozens of the metal containers float through downtown, Xinhua said.

It was not clear how well the barrels were sealed. But the environmental protection ministry said late on Wednesday that tests showed nothing abnormal about the water quality. It would monitor the river closely, it added in a statement.

Jilin city suffered a major chemical spill in November 2005, when an explosion at a petrochemical plant released tonnes of hazardous chemicals into the river.

That was covered up for over a week. In the face of widespread panic, officials were forced to cut water supplies to millions of people, including the city of Harbin in neighboring Heilongjiang province.

The latest incident was triggered when a flood surged through a chemical plant on Wednesday morning, carrying off barrels.

Around 3,000 barrels contained 170 kg (375 lb) of chemicals, and another 4,000 were empty, Xinhua said, citing a government official speaking at a news conference in Jilin.

Some 2,500 contained trimethyl chloro silicane, a colorless, flammable liquid with a pungent smell, and another 500 contained hexamethyl disilazane, another colorless but smelly liquid.

Altogether as much as 500 tonnes could potentially be floating down river.

The government of Jilin, which has a population of 4.5 million, said it had acted quickly.

"The city government paid great attention, and immediately reported the incident to the provincial government and rapidly put in place an emergency plan," it said in a faxed statement.

The Songhua River is a major tributary of the Heilongjiang or Amur River, which forms China's border with Russia for several hundred km (miles) before crossing fully into the neighboring nation.

(Reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison, Huang Yan and Ben Blanchard)