A Chinese court is [to] hear a case brought against a Lanzhou water company by local residents who claim that supplies are contaminated with benzene...Under China's new environmental law, it will be easier for class action lawsuits to be taken against alleged polluters and fines to be enforced...The five Lanzhou residents are asking the court to order Veolia to repay the costs of bottled water and health checks, and to pay compensation for the duress caused...The lawsuit argues that Lanzhou Veolia was knowingly supplying benzene-contaminated water to the city’s residents...residents were unwittingly drinking contaminated water for almost ten days...Wang Zhansheng, a professor at Tsinghua University’s School of the Environment...said...although an increasing number of water companies are publishing monitoring data online, little trust is placed in those figures, as the companies are in effect regulating themselves...