BEIJING, Dec 23: China was on Friday pouring chemicals into a river to neutralize an industrial spill of the toxic chemical cadmium that was threatening the water supplies of several southern cities.

Tens of thousands along the Beijiang river were without potable water after a state-owned smelting works last week released excessive amounts of the chemical, which can cause neurological disorders and cancer.

The major spill in Guangdong province’s Shaoguan city was China’s second in as many months after a benzene slick from a factory in northeastern China cut tap water to millions of city-dwellers for four days last month.

The two spills have focused attention on water pollution in a country where millions still lack safe drinking water and most rivers are polluted by industrial waste.

Officials this week had lowered a dam gate and released water from reservoirs upstream in Beijiang to try to slow the flow of the slick and dilute it as it headed towards the metropolis of Guangzhou.

The government was now dumping a neutralizing chemical into the river, state media on Friday quoted officials as saying.

“Experts have been sent to release ‘medicine’ into the water to reduce its toxicity,” the China News Service (CNS) quoted the director of the local China Environmental Supervision Station as saying.

“Currently there’s a turn for the better in the water quality,” said the official.

Tens of thousands of residents living upstream in Yingde city’s outlying rural areas, however, said that officials had cut their tap water altogether on Thursday.

Officials had finished a pipeline that brought water from a local reservoir, but it only serves the urban areas of Yingde.

In Longtoushan village, 7,000 cement plant employees and their families, and 3,000 nearby residents, were all relying on water supplied by fire engines, said Zhang Yongcai, the village chief.

The village has up to 200 wells, all of them in use, he said, but they could not provide sufficient water for the community.

“We have to go to public shower houses located in Wangfu town where people queue up for hours to take a shower,” he said.

Guangdong’s governor, Huang Huahua, was quoted Friday as warning residents not to use the polluted river water for agricultural use.

“We must ensure the information is told to every household and inform them not to use Beijiang water for irrigation and raising animals,” Huang was quoted by CNS saying. —AFP