国内英语新闻:Workers rush to retrieve 3,000 chemical-filled barrels in NE China river

But panicked residents in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, have begun to store water, although the governments of Harbin and Jiamusi cities along the Songhua River said domestic water supplies no longer came from the river.

The incident has revived memories of the contamination of the Songhua River in 2005 after an explosion at a petrochemical plant in Jilin Province left 3.8 million people in Harbin without drinking water for four days.

Sales of bottled water has surged by 15 to 20 percent from late Wednesday to Thursday morning, said Huang Wenfu, deputy chief of market operations of the Heilongjiang Provincial Commerce Department.

Further, the provincial environmental protection authorities said the water flow carrying the barrels would need seven days to reach Harbin.

At the end of last year, the city closed water intakes from the Songhua River and began to pump drinking water from Mopan Mountain.

Water supplies in Harbin would not be cut, said Zhang Cheng, deputy general manger of the Harbin Water Supply Drainage Group Co., Ltd.

The daily supply from the Mopan Mountain was more than 900,000 tonnes, enough to meet the daily demand of the city's residents, who normally consumes some 700,000 tonnes, said Zhang Xinya, chairman of the water supply project company under the group.

"It's totally unnecessary to hoard water," he said.