BEIJING — China has announced a multibillion-dollar plan to clean up a severely polluted lake where an algae bloom forced the suspension of water supplies to millions of people this summer.
The $14.5 billion plan to clean up Lake Tai, in a densely populated area northwest of Shanghai, should take five years, said a statement dated Friday and posted on a government Web site of the nearby city of Taizhou.
The move comes amid mounting official urgency about curbing chronic pollution in China's rivers and lakes that has left millions of people without clean water and disrupted city water systems.
Lake Tai is one of a series of lakes where blooms of blue-green algae blamed on pollution have disrupted water supplies this year. Some types of the algae produce dangerous toxins.
"The plan will control the eutrophication of Lake Tai in five years and realize the clear improvement of water quality," the government statement said. "In another eight to 10 years, the problem of the Lake Tai water pollution will be basically resolved."
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The algae bloom on Lake Tai in June prompted the suspension of running water in and around the major city of Wuxi for six days, forcing as many as 5 million people to rely on bottled water.
The algae covered as much as one-third of the 930-square-mile lake, a popular tourist attraction that has become badly polluted as the Wuxi area became a center for manufacturing and high technology. Regulators responded by ordering the mass closure of chemical plants that dumped waste into the lake.
Environmental regulators say China's rivers and lakes are so polluted that tens of millions of people have no access to clean drinking water.
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