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Workers hired to clean the Taihu Lake of algae look at the vast water body that had been a constant source of drinking water for Wuxi residents. The sudden outbreak of algae contaminated drinking water, prompting residents of the city in East China's Jiangsu Province to hoard bottled water last week. AFP

Gu Zhaodi had never had to think about water. It was taken for granted. In fact, no one in this beautiful lake city of Wuxi had bothered to spare a thought on one of the most vital elements of life.

But all that changed dramatically overnight last week. Taps in the industrial and tourism hub in East China's Jiangsu Province "ran dry". Forget cooking and washing, the city couldn't even supply enough water to its residents to quench their thirst.

"It had never occurred to me that we would not have any water to drink," says the 60-year-old grocery owner Gu. "Since our city is situated on the country's third largest lake, how could that possibly happen?" But happen it did, and all of sudden, on May 28 when the taps in the city began spewing putrid water because of a fast-spreading, foul-smelling, bluish-green algae outbreak in Taihu Lake - the pride of the city and the source of its drinking water.

"We found something wrong with the tap water around noon on May 28. It was murky and had a slightly foul smell," Gu recalls. "We didn't take it seriously initially because such things had happened a few times before in the districts close to the lake But they had always been for a day or two."

By late evening, local TV stations had begun broadcasting warnings issued by the municipal government that said tap water was contaminated and unsafe to drink. "My small bottled-water stock was soon empty as residents scrambled to buy as much water as possible after the announcements on TV," Gu says.

By the next day, panic set in among the residents because the quality of water deteriorated instead of improving. It had become yellowish and gave out a strong foul smell.

The panic spread to businesses, especially in the services sector, too. In fact, Wang Juan, a budget hotel logistics manager, ordered 20 boxes of bottled water even before the government had issued the warnings.

By the next day, such was the crisis and the accompanying panic buying that the city had run out of enough supply of bottled water. Prices shot up as unscrupulous shopkeepers and suppliers tried to make an extra buck at the expense of people's desperation, says the 33-year-old Wang. "But even then I didn't expect the crisis to last so long, and I guess others thought the same."

Algae outbreak in Taihu Lake is not new for Wuxi residents. It had been happening almost every summer in recent years. Algae usually boom because of rich nutrients in water that flow in from farms and households and especially when the water temperature is comparatively high.

Taihu Lake is surrounded by many small enterprises, which sprang up in the 1980s. In the 1990s, many foreign-funded companies joined the domestic ones around the huge water body. The industries prospered, and the local economy boomed. But that came with a price: pollution. The lake was treated like a natural effluent dump, with factories emptying fertilizers, industrial wastes and untreated sewage in it.

"The beautiful lake used to be our pride and our city's business trump card," says Tan Yun, a middle-aged taxi driver. "But now the blessing has turned into a curse."

Although billions of yuan have been spent to clean up the lake, the situation keeps deteriorating because the flow of pollutants into it far outpaces the clean-up drive, say experts and residents.

Continuous and unusually high temperatures in May, lack of rainfall and the lowest water level in 50 years in the lake, say experts, are the main reasons for this year's unprecedented algae outbreak. Such was the intensity of the outbreak that it covered almost 70 percent of the lake surface.

"It's largely a man-made crisis," a local newspaper quoted Nanjing University environment professor Zuo Yuhui as saying. "If the water is less polluted, the algae cannot grow."

The quality of tap water has improved since. It was declared normal over the weekend, and the one-week crisis appears to be over thanks to the local government's strenuous efforts and the mercy of the weather. Local authorities have induced artificial rainfall, diverted water from the Yangtze River to dilute the pollution in the lake and improved water treatment techniques. The weather has helped, with the mercury falling below 30 C over the past few days.

Also, the government has taken up a concerted campaign to clean up the lake. "The ordeal is partly over," says Zhang Chen, with a sigh of relief. The owner of a small barbershop, who too suffered a fall in business because of the water crisis, says: "Apart from the poor business, the most disgusting and uncomfortable part was not being able to take a bath over the past week."

The situation, however, is still not normal, for that will take some time, say experts. Flushing out the putrid water completely from the intricate and massive network of pipelines and tanks is a lengthy process, says Zhou Xiaojian, a professor with environmental science and engineering department of Beijing's Tsinghua University.

And if the temperature rises unusually high again in the next couple months and the water level remains low, the lake could see another outbreak of algae, says Hu Weiping, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

But to prevent that from happening, the local government has decided to launch an eight-point environmental campaign to clean the lake. The measures include the shutting down of small chemical plants around the lake and building more waste water plants to treat sewage.

The local government has taken every possible hazard into consideration, and sees the crisis in the proper perspective. "We should have a clear understanding and be well prepared that cleaning up and protecting Taihu Lake is a major ecological and environment task, an arduous, complex and long-term job that cannot be addressed overnight," a government report issued on Sunday said.

Residents, on their part, have learnt a valuable lesson. Says hotel logistics manager Wang: "Never before did we take water-saving seriously. We hadn't thought environmental degradation could hurt us this way I think everyone in the city will now take environmental protection more seriously."

For Grocery owner Gu the crisis was a wake-up call. "It's time we restored the beauty of the lake Otherwise, our very livelihood would be at risk as shown by the past week."

The Taihu Lake has jolted, and rightly so, all and sundry into action to save the environment and nature's gifts that we as a matter of fact take it for granted. That itself is an important lesson learnt.

(China Daily 06/05/2007 page12)