BEIJING (AP) - Most of China's chemical plants pose a ''grave environmental risk'' because they are located too close to cities and rivers, a top regulator said Tuesday.
The State Environmental Protection Administration warned of an increase in toxic accidents unless safety was tightened at facilities, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
A government study prompted by a string of pollution disasters found that 81 percent of the 7,555 plants surveyed are near water sources or population centers, Xinhua said.
''Unless effective risk prevention measures were taken, it would be impossible to check the trend of surging environmental incidents,'' SEPA deputy director Pan Yue was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
Environmental protection, long ignored in China's breakneck economic growth, has taken on unprecedented official urgency following toxic river spills that forced several cities to cut off running water to millions of people.
Premier Wen Jiabao and other senior officials have warned that China faces a critical water shortage due to chronic pollution and chemical accidents. The government says some 340 million people already lack access to water deemed clean enough to drink.
The latest survey found that 1,354 chemical plants are adjacent to water sources, while 2,489 are in population centers, Xinhua said. It said 86 are around the Three Gorges Dam on central China's Yangtze River.
''Such geographical distribution poses grave environmental risks. It's the fundamental reason behind soaring water pollution incidents since last year,'' said Pan.
He recommended unspecified legal changes to strengthen environmental protection, Xinhua said.
''Otherwise, environmental accidents will continue to occur and public environmental safety cannot be guaranteed,'' he was quoted as saying.
In the biggest disaster yet, a spill of nitrobenzene and other chemicals into the Songhua river in November forced Harbin, the biggest city in the northeast, to suspend running water to 3.8 million people for five days.
The spill flowed across the border into Russia, straining Beijing's ties with Moscow, a key ally.
The top Chinese environmental regulator was forced to resign over the spill. But the disaster gave his agency new prominence, and its officials now deliver blunt public warnings about pollution that once might have been suppressed in favor of economic interests.
In December, a smelter dumped 1,000 tons of cadmium-laced waste into the Bei River in Guangdong, the southern province that is the heart of China's export-driven manufacturing industries, forcing cities to temporarily shut down water systems.