"To rid the water of the odour and taste is a difficult problem for our water treatment (plants)," the government said in a statement on its website.

The government said it had issued orders to bring in more bottled water supplies and to cap their price to stop profiteering.

The state-run Xinhua news agency said the price of an 18-litre bottle of water in Wuxi sold for 50 yuan (6.50 dollars) on Wednesday, more than six times higher than the normal price of eight yuan.

Officials have also ordered the diversion of water from local rivers into Taihu lake, the main source of drinking water for Wuxi, to help wash out the algae, it said.

Residents told AFP that the water coming out of taps was green or yellow and left a slimy film on the hands and body when used to wash.

"The tap water is like waste water, it smells so bad that you want to vomit," a shop owner in downtown Wuxi surnamed Li told AFP by phone.

"This is the third day that the water has been like this, if you wash with the water you end up smelling like it."

On Wednesday, stores in the city of five million people in Jiangsu province began rationing sales of bottled water, Li said.

State television on Thursday showed lines of residents buying and carting off bottled water, with many shop shelves already empty.

The industrial city on the lower reaches of the Yangtze river relies on the once scenic Taihu lake for its drinking supplies.

Photos showed the lake choked in a thick green-blue muck interspersed with floating garbage.

Taihu lake has been under stress for years as untreated sewage from local towns and villages, as well as the region's booming chemical and light manufacturing industries, have left the water choked with pollutants.

But conditions for the algae bloom have ripened with the lake's water levels being at their lowest in 50 years due to a lack of rain and high temperatures, Xinhua said.

Meanwhile, the inflow from the Yangtze and other rivers has not been strong enough to wash out the pollution, according to Xinhua.

Officials did not say how long the crisis would last, but Hu Weiping, a biologist with Nanjing Academy of Sciences, told the China News Service that the algae bloom could remain for another four or five months.

Algae blooms threaten most Chinese freshwater lakes and are chiefly caused by untreated sewage and high concentrations of nitrogen, which is a main ingredient in soap powders and fertilisers.

Like much of China's environment, its waterways have suffered severely during the nation's breakneck economic growth over the past two decades.

More than 70 percent of China's waterways and 90 percent of its underground water are contaminated by pollution, according to government figures.

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