Thousands of people in Maoming, Guangdong province, are without drinking water, despite the local environment authority saying yesterday it is safe to drink, two days after a chemical plant in the city exploded.

The Sinopec Maoming Company Ethylene Plant was hit by lightning on Tuesday evening. The explosion led to a big fire and resulted in a large amount of carbon dust filling the air. Rivers and wells in villages around the factory were also polluted by the carbon dust.

"The water in the well near my house is dark," villager Pan Lei said yesterday.

According to villagers' committees, the pollution has affected more than 5,000 villagers in 13 villages that are close to the factory, as most of them only use well water.

Farmers' crops were also polluted by the carbon dust and villagers said it will be difficult to clean and sell them. Their normal lives have been seriously affected.

The local environmental protection authority has dispatched watchdogs to investigate the case.

"We tested the polluted water on Wednesday and found that each milliliter of water contains 4.6 mg of carbon," an official surnamed Zhang from the Maoming environmental protection bureau, told China Daily yesterday.

The carbon caused the drinking water to become dark, but "carbon is not toxic", he said.

In the past few days, villagers have dared not use water from wells or rivers.

"We have to buy bottled water to drink, cook, or even wash dishes," Pan said.

Zhang said they pumped a lot of polluted water from all wells in the 13 villages on Wednesday and yesterday.

The water quality has returned to normal , people should feel at ease, he said.

Mei Rong, a woman living in one of the villages, said the water yesterday was cleaner than before.

"I still worry about the water quality though, I will still drink bottled water until others start using the well again," she said.

Sinopec said the explosion would not influence the company's business performance.

The plant will stop operations for 10 to 15 days. Another facility, whose output is 360,000 tons a year, was not affected by the explosion.

(China Daily June 6, 2008)