Pollution in China's third largest freshwater lake, the Taihu Lake, is expected to be rooted out in 10 years, a high-ranking official said on Monday.

An algae outbreak at the end of last May rendered tap water undrinkable for about 10 days, affecting more than 1 million residents in Wuxi City of Jiangsu Province.

"That sounded an alarm for the environment protection in Jiangsu," governor of Jiangsu Luo Zhijun said.

He pledged that the provincial government would give environment protection a top priority while achieving industrial growth in the future.

"We plan to spend five years controlling the over-nutrition of blue-green algae in the Taihu Lake, and another five to eight years resolving the lake pollution in a fundamental way," he said on the sidelines of annual session of China's parliament in Beijing.

About 30 million people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and Shanghai rely on the Taihu Lake as a drinking water source.

(Xinhua News Agency March 17, 2008)