THE RIVER RUNS BLACK
China has only 7 percent of the world's water reserves, but breakneck economic growth over the past three decades has increased pollution and made clean water supplies even scarcer. In addition, the number of accidents on Chinese factories has risen drastically in recent years. In 2005, the Songhua River in Northeast China was the scene of one of the worst chemical disasters in history. The spill affected millions of riverside residents along China’s third biggest river and strained ties with Russia.

A migrant family’s boss has been about the house to check up on the working progress at the river. He brought leftovers from a business lunch earlier in the day. Since the family doesnÕt get that kind of nice restaurant food very often, they start to eat it right out of the plastic bags, before returning to work. Christian Als / GraziaNeri

The first cigarette of the day quickly fills the room, seconds after the oldest brother of the migrant family, Jiang Jigao, has awoken early in the morning. Soon after the 14 hour-a-day work at the paper factory run-outs begins. He used to work as a fisherman, but there are no longer any fish in the river that runs through his village. Christian Als / GraziaNeri

A lot of China’s celebrated economic growth is made at the cost of human health. A family are working on the river; their job is to get leeches out of the river floor. They can sell the leeches to the medical industry for less than 10 USD per kilo. It takes a long day of hard work for the four of them to get one kilo of leeches. Christian Als / GraziaNeri

China has promised to take a series of measures to improve water quality in Songhua River, including construction of more sewage and garbage treatment plants in cities and enforcing clean production in industries along the river. Here a man is watching nearly black wastewater coming from an oil refinery in Jilin. Christian Als / GraziaNeri

Shang Maoping fetch water directly from the river like millions of other people residing along Songhua River. The little tarped woodwork behind Shang is his familyÕs only lavatory. Songhua is the main water source for more than 62 million people in Northeast China. Christian Als / GraziaNeri

Jiang Lianxue, Zhang Xianwen og Li Hanmin from the local NGO ‘Jilin Environment Protect Volunteer Association’ are inspecting the sewage run-out at ‘Chenming Paper Making Company’. The NGO has more than 1000 members, many of them former employees at the polluting factories lining the Songhua River. They know better than most the reckless methods of disharging the chemical dumping. Christian Als / GraziaNeri

The Petro China chemical plant explosions on November 13, 2005, occured over the period of an hour. The explosions killed five, injured dozens, and caused the evacuation of tens of thousands of Jilin residents. The blast created an 80 kilometer long toxic slick in the Songhua River. The slick, predominantly made up of benzene and nitrobenzene, passed through the Amur River in Russia over subsequent weeks. Christian Als / GraziaNeri