Poor China is getting some of the worst of weather and water shortages

January 6, 2013 – CHINA - Temperatures in China have plunged to their lowest in almost three decades, cold enough to freeze coastal waters and trap 1,000 ships in ice, official media said at the weekend. Since late November the country has shivered at an average of minus 3.8 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit), 1.3 degrees colder than the previous average, and the chilliest in 28 years, state news agency Xinhua said on Saturday, citing the China Meteorological Administration. Bitter cold has even frozen the sea in Laizhou Bay on the coast of Shandong province in the east, stranding nearly 1,000 ships, the China Daily newspaper reported. Zheng Dong, chief meteorologist at the Yantai Marine Environment Monitoring Center under the State Oceanic Administration, told the paper that the area under ice in Laizhou Bay was 291 square km this week. Transport around the country has been severely disrupted. More than 140 flights from the state capital airport in central Hunan province were delayed, while heavy snowfall forced the closure of some sections of the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway, the China Daily said. Temperatures in the northeast fell even further, reaching a 43-year low of minus 15.3 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Fahrenheit), about 3.7 degrees below the previous recorded average. One truck driver in southeastern Jiangxi province, caught in a 5 km (3.1 miles) queue caused by a pileup that happened after heavy snowfall, told China Daily the snow and extreme cold had caught him unawares. “I didn’t expect such a situation, so I’ve brought no warm coats or food. All I can do now is wait,” trucker Yao Xuefeng told the paper. –MSNBC


Residents in a northern Chinese city are without water after the local government cut off the supply because of industrial chemicals that contaminated a river. The Handan city government in Hebei province says it cut off the water Saturday afternoon after an accident in neighboring Shanxi province caused pollutants to pour into a river. It didn’t say how many residents were affected. The population of the city and its rural areas is 9 million. Sunday that a loose drainage valve in a chemical plant was to blame for the leaking of nearly 9 tons of the chemical aniline into the river. It said another 30 tons of aniline have been contained in a disused reservoir. Aniline, used in manufacturing polyurethane, can be toxic to humans.