Another day will be needed to complete the cleanup of a market flooded by river sludge in Baoshan District on Monday, officials said yesterday.

A taxi runs past the sludge in Baoshan District of Shanghai, east China, Jan. 19, 2009. A stack of river channel sludge collapsed here on Monday, leaving a bazaar and shops nearby affected. No casualties were reported by press time. [Liu Ying/Xinhua]

Shanghai Qixiang Construction Co Ltd said about 40 shop owners had registered for compensation after their produce was made unfit for sale.

Other market vendors who were away for the Spring Festival will also be compensated, said a Baoshan District government official.

"These days were supposed to be the best time for wholesale business, as the Spring Festival is looming," said a market vendor surnamed Li. "Now it's all over. All the food was soaked in fetid silt. Who's going to want these products?"

Some shop owners lost about 10,000 yuan (US$1,462), according to Li, after more than 1,000 cubic meters of silt, the waste product from a river dredging operation, flooded the market.

About 10,000 cubic meters of silt was being stored behind a wall at a former marble factory, said Wang Jinfu with Shanghai Qixiang Construction. The company planned to remove the silt after it dried out and the dredging project was due to finish in two days, Wang said.

Chen, deputy general manager of parent company Dachang Industry Co, a town-owned company, said no rules had been broken.

"The land is disused and belongs to the town-owned company. We talked to Qixiang and lent the land to them," Chen said.

But an official at Shanghai's public sanitation authority said the company should have applied for a temporary license from the town's sanitation or road authority before they stored sludge in the former factory, specifying where and how long they would use the site.

"They cannot place sludge there without any authorization," the official, who declined to be named, said.

Chen said that the company had failed to spot a sewer in the factory. Water came in, and the wall eventually collapsed under the pressure.