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| Workers from the Lu'an Group, parent company of the Tianji Coal Chemical Industry Group, use activated carbon to clean aniline from the Huangniuti Reservoir in Lucheng, Shanxi, on Wednesday. (Photo/China Daily) |
The water supply was sourced from groundwater from Sunday to Tuesday.
"With the water quality in Yuecheng Reservoir testing safe, the water supply shifted back to the reservoir on Tuesday night," Liu Donghua, a spokeswoman for Handan Water Supply Co, said on Wednesday.
She said workers have tested the water quality hourly since Tuesday.
Hou Risheng, chief engineer of the Handan environmental protection bureau, said at a news conference on Tuesday that testing showed the water in Yuecheng Reservoir is safe, but the five monitoring spots upstream of the Zhuozhang River had excessive aniline levels.
On Sunday, Chen Jianwen, general manager of Tianji Coal Chemical, deputy manager Ren Yongjie and two other employees were sacked.
Changzhi authorities say they will suspend operations at 112 chemical companies along the Zhuozhang River to eliminate potential hazards.
China's coal-rich Shanxi province has been the scene of a series of accidents over the past week.
On Jan 3, the Work Safety Committee of the State Council condemned a subsidiary of the China Railway Tunnel Group for covering up a deadly explosion at a railway tunnel project in Shanxi for five days. The accident killed eight people and injured five.
On Monday, a gas explosion also killed seven people in a Yangquan Coal Industry mine in Jinzhong.
Li Xiaopeng, acting governor of Shanxi, said at an emergency conference on safety on Tuesday that Tianji Coal Chemical and Yangquan Coal Industry had suspended their operations. He urged authorities to make work safety a top priority.
"We have zero tolerance for coverups," Li said.
Zhang Bao, mayor of Changzhi in Shanxi, where the aniline spill occurred, apologized for a five-day delay in reporting the accident to the provincial authorities on Monday.
Sun Ruisheng in Taiyuan and Xiang Mingchao in Hefei contributed to this story.
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