Acid spill in China’s Grand Canal

A ship ran aground in China’s 900-year-old Grand Canal dumping 200 tons of sulfuric acid into water, state media said Friday, in the latest incident to taint the country’s already severely polluted waterways.

The official Xinhua News Agency said that pollution-control officials dumped 200 tons of liquid alkali into the water within 12 hours to neutralize the acid.

The boat crash occurred Wednesday in the canal’s Yuhang section in Hangzhou, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Shanghai, it said.