Two managers of a China power generating company have been sacked for lax supervision that led to a diesel spill that polluted the Yangtze River and hit water supplies, state media said on Tuesday.

The Luzhou power plant in China's southwest, which belongs to Chuannan Power Company, leaked 17 tons of diesel oil into the Yangtze in November after a storage device broke, Xinhua news agency reported. "The oil slick moved down the river to neighbouring regions because the company's underestimated the volume of oil involved and this hampered clean-up activities," Xinhua cited the Sichuan Environmental Protection Administration as saying.

A third manager at the plant was given a warning over the spill, which also briefly affected the local water supply company, the report said. China has seen a growing string of environmental disasters as industries expand to feed its booming economy, often with little oversight or regulation.

An explosion at a chemical plant in northwest China last year spewed cancer-causing benzene compounds into the Songhua River, creating a toxic slick that poisoned the source of drinking water for millions. Last week, a company in the northwestern province of Gansu was caught dumping calcium hydroxide and calcium carbonate into the Yellow River, the China Daily reported on Tuesday. The local environmental protection bureau fined the Lanzhou Xinxibu Vinylon Company Ltd. for the spill which caused a white slick along a 30-km (19-mile) stretch of the river and disrupted water supplies to 2,000 households.

The company had previously been listed by the State Environmental Protection Administration as one of the 11 top polluters in the country, the report said. But it quoted Huang Lihui, the company's general manager, as saying Xinxibu Vinylon did not have enough money for pollution control measures.
(Planet Ark, 27/12/2006)