The company that spilled toxic chemicals into the drinking water supply in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, should have been closed down a long time ago, the city's mayor said on Sunday.

A man looks on at the waste treatment plant that last month spilled toxic chemicals into drinking water supplies for Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, yesterday. The authorities shut down the plant after 200,000 people were cut off from tap water for 25 hours. [Li Fei/China Daily]

Local governments must do more to ensure the incident is not repeated and officials must pay more attention to the concerns of the public, Mayor Li Qiang said.

Local people had submitted dozens of complaints about the chemical plant but nothing had been done about it, he said.

The water supply to about 200,000 people in Yancheng was cut for more than a day last month after it was contaminated with potentially lethal carbolic acid discharged from the factory.

The incident had been a "very serious inconvenience" to local people and "badly affected the city's image", Li said.

The intake from the river has been moved upstream to help avoid future pollution problems caused by nearby factories, he said.

The government will also upgrade the city's water treatment plants, he said.

The water supply pipes at the city's two major water plants have been connected so if one runs into trouble, the other will still be able to serve the city's needs, local news portal jsyc.vnet.cn reported yesterday.

Also, capacity at the Chengdong water plant, one of the two main sources, will be doubled to 200,000 tons per day by the end of the year, it said.

The government has also ordered the closure of 21 chemical firms within the city's water preservation area to prevent future chemical pollution in the region, Li said.

"Those companies were potential threats to the environment because of their poor product quality and bad management," he said.

(China Daily March 3, 2009)