BEIJING — The long-term environmental impact of last month's chemical explosion in northern China that left millions without safe drinking water remains to be seen. But the political fallout has begun.
Beijing sacked its top environment official Friday in an effort to show accountability for the mishandling of the crisis. More heads are expected to roll, possibly including local party leaders in Jilin province where the petrochemical plant accident spilled 100 tons of benzene and other cancer-causing chemicals into the Songhua River.
Residents of Harbin, a city of 3.8 million downstream from Jilin, were not informed about the contamination until 10 days after the accident. The 50-mile toxic slick is still making its way downstream toward the Russian border, forcing more towns and villages to shut off their taps and switch to bottled water.
Some observers say the Harbin water crisis illustrates a bigger problem: China's bureaucratic paralysis during emergencies.
"This is a systemwide failure," said Jiang Wenran, acting director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta. "The system itself is not set up to respond quickly. At every level there was confusion and delay."
Xie Zhenhua, chief of the State Environmental Protection Administration since 1993, took the fall, partly because he sat at the top of the chain of command.
Shortly before Xie's resignation was announced, his agency lashed out at Jilin officials for failing to report the disaster in a timely fashion. The official China Daily quoted Wang Yuqing, vice minister of the environmental agency, as saying that, for about four days after the Nov. 13 explosion, the agency received no information on the accident, "losing the best opportunity" to control the pollution.
Jiang, a Harbin native who has done extensive research on the incident, said authorities in the provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang, where Harbin is located, contacted Beijing seeking directions. The scale of the disaster was such that they had no authority to act independently of the central government.
"When the responsibility reached them, [environmental agency officials] were not able to make a quick decision," Jiang said. "They were telling the Jilin and Heilongjiang officials to find some kind of excuses."
