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China's worst-ever oil spill threatens wildlife
Chinese officials have warned of a severe threat to wildlife from one of the country's worst reported oil spills as an army of volunteers was dispatched to beaches to try to head off the black tides.
At least one man has drowned in crude during the clean-up operation, which has expanded as the area of the slick has doubled in size despite earlier government assurances that it was being contained and posed no risk to ecologically sensitive areas.
Five days after a pipeline explosion at the north-east port of Dalian, oil had reportedly spread over an area of 430 square kilometres, prompting a dispersal mission along the coast.
Hundreds of local volunteers are spreading absorbent matting along the Yellow Sea shoreline in an attempt to stop the slick from damaging beaches.
Out at sea, authorities have started to use oil-consuming bacteria to try to disperse the slick, along with chemical agents and lengthy floating barrages.
Even though maritime officials have mobilised 800 fishing boats to assist the 40 specialist vessels in the operation, the winds and tides are spreading the slick wider and thinner.
The difficult conditions have proved fatal for at least one man. A 25-year-old firefighter, Zhang Liang, drowned on Tuesday when a wave threw him from a vessel, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
In some areas, volunteers equipped only with rubber gloves, rubber boots and rudimentary tools have struggled to cope with the waves washing up on the beaches.
"I've been to a few bays today and discovered they were almost entirely covered with dark oil," Zhong Yu of the environmental group Greenpeace China, told the Associated Press. "The oil is half-solid and half-liquid and is as sticky as asphalt."
Fishing in the waters around Dalian has been banned until the end of August.
"The oil spill will pose a severe threat to marine animals and water quality, and sea birds," Huang Yong, deputy bureau chief for the city's Maritime Safety Administration, told a regional TV station.
The authorities say the leak was staunched within 24 hours of last Friday's accident, but they have yet to reveal how much oil was discharged before then. The state-run China Central television channel estimates the spill at 1,500 tons, less than 0.5% of the amount released into the ocean by the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Local officials have been upbeat about the prospects of a quick clean-up and a resumption of normal services at the port, which has had to redirect 420 vessels from the area of the slick.
"Our priority is to collect the spilled oil within five days to reduce the possibility of contaminating international waters," Dalian's vice mayor, Dai Yulin, told reporters earlier this week. Other officials expect the operation to last twice as long and even then it is far from clear that the ecological damage will end. |
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發表於 2010-7-21 22:54
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