MOSCOW, November 27 (RIA Novosti) - Fifty metric tons of absorbent carbon will be delivered to towns situated downstream from the city of Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East to clean the Amur River from a toxic spill heading from China, a spokesman for the Russian environmental watchdog said Sunday.
"We expect two planes to deliver 20 tons of absorbent carbon from Perm [a city in the Volga Federal District] Monday," said Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Russian Federal Service for Nature Management Supervision. He added that the other 30 tons of absorbent carbon would be delivered Wednesday.
Mitvol also said that a state of emergency would be introduced in the area as soon as the presence of nitrobenzene was detected.
Local authorities increased the supplies of fresh water in the area and warned businessmen against raising the prices of bottled water by more than 10%.
About 100 tons of chemicals were released into the Songhua River, a tributary of the Amur, following an explosion at a petrochemical plant in China on November 13. An 80-km (50-mile) stretch of contaminated water is slowly moving towards Russia.
