Wuxi residents have started to flee their city because of an ongoing water crisis and a part of them is entering Shanghai to stay with their relatives. The Taihu lake that should provide the city with drinking water has been hit by algae, caused by a combination of pollution, lack of water and the higher temperatures. More cities depending on the Taihu lake, like Suzhou have not yet been affected.
Part of the water supply has already been halted at May 22, but the crisis seems to be far from over.
Chinese media focus on the positive side, supermarkets bringing in emergency supplies of water to their stores and plans to divert water from the Yangtze river. More details at the website of CCTV.
Update I: Foreign media have been pretty late in recognizing the severity of this environmental crisis. This report from Reuters is the first one I just saw and depends mostly on Chinese media.
Update II: Danwei summerizes the fallout at the internet.
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The Dutch NRC Handelsblad had an article about the water crisis in its paper from yesterday (Thursday). I was reading it on the plane last night, and was surprised to see that according to them Shanghai is also getting its water from Taihu and might also be affected!
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