A river in China deemed clean enough to drink mysteriously turned red overnight, shocking residents and officials.
Residents of the area claim the phenomenon has never happened before,
and the colour change was not caused by an industrial contamination.
The river is located in Xinmeizhou village, Cangnan County in eastern
China’s Zhejiang province.
A local told the Daily Express that, the water looked normal at 4 am,
“but then suddenly, within the space of a few minutes, the water
started turning darker and eventually was completely red.”
The local said they used to catch fishes as well as drink the water because it was normally good.
China Radio International reports that Wenzhou Environmental Protection Bureau inspectors have taken samples for analysis.
A professor of Limnology (the study of inland waters) at the
University of Wisconsin Emily Stanley told LiveScience that “It looks
like a pollutant phenomenon. Water bodies that have turned red very fast
in the past have happened because people have dumped dyes into them”.
The conversation on social media is that it was the start of The
Apocalypse but officials claim it was as a result of sand distribution
due to upstream flooding.