Zijin Mining Group Co., China's largest gold producer, is unlikely to get approval to resume production at one of its copper mines this year, after waste water contaminated a river in July, said local authorities Wednesday.

In early July, about 9,100 cubic meters of waste water from one of Zijin's copper mine's treatment plant in Shanghang County, east China's Fujian Province, leaked into the Tingjiang River, killing thousands of fish.

The treatment of the acidic waste water, the main pollutant in the leak, had basically finished on the Tingjiang River, said a spokesman with a county government work group dealing with the contamination accident.

He said the rebuilding of the mine's waste treatment tank had started. The authorities would stringently inspect the finished project before granting the company a production license.

The company said in a statement earlier this month that it lowered its copper output target by 10,000 tonnes to 90,000 tonnes this year because of the suspension at Shanghang.

Chen Jiahong, vice president of Zijin Mining Group Co., and three high-ranking executives of the Shanghang copper mine were detained in July on allegations regarding the pollution.

Investigators found that although persistent heavy rains caused the impermeable seal of the waste tank to burst, releasing the waste water, an "illegally built passage" was dug to connect the tank to an outfall used to drain flood water, which directly caused the river's contamination.

The investigation showed the plant failed to improve the system, as ordered by the provincial environmental protection authorities in September 2009 when they found the plant discharged waste water into the Tingjiang River.

Neither the company nor the county authorities has announced a compensation plan for fishermen whose livelihoods were affected by the pollution.

The county government has invited experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to help draft a plan to develop the river's fishery resources after the contamination.

(Xinhua News Agency August 25, 2010)