Translated by CDT from Guangzhou Daily:
Chikan (赤坎) is a small town in Kaiping City (开平市), Guangdong Province. The Chikan water plant supplies drinking water to 50,000 residents in four towns. On January 7, a bag and luggage manufacturer, five meters from the water plant, dumped chunks of muddy black waste water into a river where the water plant draws water. Soon the water plant realized that the water was gravely contaminated and stopped supplying water, cutting off the drinking water to 50,000 people for several days.
The firm, set up in 2004, had a small operation but recently added an electroplating workshop and started directly offloading waste into the river with a hidden duct, only 100 meters from the intake pipe of the drinking water plant. Local government soon had to send in six sprinkler vehicles loaded with tanks of clean water into the towns, where residents wait in long lines for water.
City officials, along with environmental, hygiene and other health officials, went down to the site and ordered the waste water treated before dumping. [Full Text in Chinese]
[Image: Polluter is having someone to plug the hidden discharge channel, via sina.com]
