Polluted discharge from factories in south China affect drinking water of 40,000 villagers

Waste water discharged from a chemical factory has polluted a river in southern China and affected the drinking water of 40,000 villagers living along its banks, state media and a local official said.
A five-mile stretch of the Sancha River in Guangdong province has been tainted by the factory which "illegally discharged polluted water and caused the incident," the official Xinhua News Agency said.
It did not give any details on what kind of chemicals were involved but said dead fish and shrimp have been found in the water.
The factory is located in Huazhou, a city upstream from Changqi. Xinhua did not release its name.
The town head said the pollution had made a few people ill but none needed to be hospitalized and all had recovered. Some livestock and poultry also died, he said.
Villagers have been told not to drink river water, eat dead fish or use river water for irrigation, he said.
Environmental officials are taking water samples everyday for testing, he said.
Xinhua said government officials in Wuchuan, which oversees Changqi, have taken emergency measures to prevent the dead fish and shrimp from being sold at markets.
Most of China's canals, rivers and lakes are severely tainted by industrial, agricultural and household pollution. Only about a third of the 3.7 billion tons of waste water discharged by Chinese cities each year is treated.
Earlier this month, the country's chief environmental regulator said China has suffered 76 environmental accidents -- or one every two days -- since a toxic river spill last year in the northeast.
The Nov. 13 chemical spill forced the city of Harbin, a major industrial center, to shut off water supplies to 3.8 million people for five days, and sent toxins flowing into Russia, straining relations.