The water in a river in northeast China's Jilin Province tested free of chemicals Thursday, a day after floods swept thousands of chemical-filled barrels into the waterway.

A Ministry of Environmental Protection work team has been dispatched to deal with the emergency and to step up monitoring of water quality in the Songhua River, ministry spokesman Tao Detian said.

A water test conducted at 4:00 AM Thursday showed no contamination in Zhaoyuan County, Heilongjiang Province, which is downstream of where the accident happened.

The river's water flow takes 50 hours to reach Heilongjiang, according to the provincial environment protection department.

The provincial government has initiated an emergency response and prepared workers to recover the barrels.

The Songhua River was contaminated by a chemical spill in November 2005 after an explosion at a petrochemical plant. The spill caused a five-day cut in water supply to the 3.8 million residents of Harbin, capital city of Heilongjiang Province.

More than 7,000 barrels washed into the Songhua River in Yongji County, Jilin City, Wednesday, after rain-triggered floods hit a chemical plant.

Some 3,000 of the barrels contained 170 kilograms of chemicals each and about 4,000 were empty, government officials told a press conference Thursday morning in Jilin City. So far, about 400 buckets had been recovered.

The Songhua River is the largest tributary of the Heilongjiang River, a border river between China and Russia.

(Xinhua News Agency July 29, 2010)