A massive algae bloom has spread out over another of China's big lakes, despite hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on years of clean up efforts.
"In recent days, due to the hot and humid weather, a large amount of algae has bloomed in Dianchi Lake, turning the water as green as paint in a stretch along the shore near Kunming city," the Oriental Daily reported Monday.
"Wave after wave of rolling green lake water laps up on the shore giving off an awful stench."
Dianchi, in southwest China's Yunnan province, is the country's sixth largest freshwater lake. It has suffered from severe pollution since the early 1990s and is plagued by algae blooms each summer, the paper said.
The bloom comes after algae choked Taihu and Chaohu lakes, China's third and fifth largest freshwater lakes respectively, in late May and early June, underscoring the state of China's degraded water system.
More than 70 percent of China's waterways and 90 percent of its underground water are contaminated by pollution, according to the State Environmental Protection Administration.
The Taihu scare affected tap water for millions of nearby residents although the poor state of Dianchi means people do not rely on it for drinking supplies.
The algae bloom at Dianchi comes despite about 464 million dollars having been spent to clean it up from the early 1990s to 2003, according to a 2006 report from the government's China Research Academy of Environmental Sciences.
About 175 million dollars of these funds were from World Bank loans, it said.
A report by the US embassy in China said that more than two billion dollars had been spent on cleaning up the lake.
