Hechi Villagers Suffers Pollution Disaster    

Causing by the arsenic polluted drinking water, more than 200 villagers in Jinchengjiang district of Hechi city, Guangxi autonomous region of southern China were sickened, reported by the Hechi government on October 8th. As of October 10th, 450 villagers were checked to have been affected by the polluted water, 19 villagers stayed in the hospital for curing. Five officials have been fired for poor management and oversight. The Hechi government ordered on October 8th all metallurgy factories located in Hechi city to discontinue production.
    According to an initial investigation, the drinking water may have been polluted by waste water from Jinhai Metallurgy Chemical Company, a branch of Liuzhou China Tin Group Co., Ltd. The Hechi government analyzed the torrential rains from a recent typhoon on September 25th poured into the waste water treatment pool in the factory, steeped arsenic contained materials and caused the arsenic-contained water from the factory to overflow into nearby ponds and wells, which polluted the underground water drunk by villagers without any treatment and check.
   Hechi, the southern city has just suffered an explosion in a chemical factory on August 26th, (CCR 2008 No.25) which caused the Work Safety Committee to focus on the chemical production.
    China's government has recently become more sensitive to the environmental cost of the country's economic boom. When the whole country is trying to solve the melamine polluted milk disaster, there came to the arsenic pollution case.
   The state owned Liuzhou China Tin Group Co., Ltd. has an employment of more than 14 thousand in 33 subsidiaries located in Liuzhou, Hechi, Laibin cities of Guangxi. The group can annually process 2.5 million tons of mineral ore, and produce 25 thousand tons of tin, 40 thousand tons of lead/antimony, 60 thousand tons of zinc, 80 tons of indium and 70 tons of silver. The indium reserve it owned ranks the first worldwide. Its tin reserve accounts for one third of the national total.
   The disaster may totally cause the 5.3 million t/a capacity in non-ferrous mining and 700 thousand t/a metallurgy capacity to shut down for one or two months. The production capacity of both lead and zinc in Hechi city are expected to share 20% of the national total.