More than 210,000 residents in two separate regions are suffering from contaminated drinking water supplies, local media reported yesterday.

In the first instance, water from the three branches of the Hanjiang River in Hubei province have reportedly been polluted by an unknown source, with 200,000 residents affected since Sunday.

"We first found that the color of the water had turned red and contained bubbles, about 4 pm on Sunday," Gao Qijin, the tap water factory chief of Xingou town on the side of the branch Dongjing River, was quoted as saying yesterday by the Chutian Metropolis Daily.

"We stopped water supplies in time," Gao said.

The other two Hanjiang River branches contaminated are the Xinglong and Tianguan rivers.

All residents affected by the pollution have had to make do with bottled water or underground reserve supplies, Gao said.

Five schools in the area have also had to suspend classes because of the water crisis, he said.

The authorities have reportedly closed off parts of the Xinglong River near the upper stream of the Hanjiang last night, which controls water flow from the Hanjiang into the main areas affected by the contamination - Jianli county and the city of Qianjiang, which have a total population of 200,000.

Local environment officials said yesterday they are still trying to identify the source of the pollution.

"It is still too early to say that the crisis was caused by pollution from the upper reaches," an official of the Qianjiang environmental protection administration, surnamed Peng, was quoted as saying.

Peng said that recent high temperatures could have affected the decomposition of garbage in the river.

All the tap water factories in the affected areas have been ordered to stop operations until the local environmental protection administration completes their inspection of the water, officials said.

In another case, more than 10,000 residents in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, are facing a contaminated water crisis, local newspaper Dushi Times reported yesterday.

The areas affected are in Songming county and Yiliang county.

Zhou Shunfu, a 48-year-old farmer, who allegedly added 120 tons of phosphorus slurry into his farm as fertilizer in Yiliang county from last Thursday to Sunday, was said to have contaminated underground water supplies in the area.

Zhou was reportedly placed under the control of the local security department.

"I found all the fish in my pond dead on Sunday morning," villager Yang Zhengbo was quoted as saying.

(China Daily February 27, 2008)