Clean-up campaigns costing nearly seven billion yuan (HK$6.51 billion) are planned for two lakes to help solve the shortage of drinking water. The Government is to spend 6.76 billion yuan on Lake Taihu in the next three years. The plan is to make the water drinkable by 2010, a Jiangsu province official told China Daily. Taihu is one of the country's three big freshwater lakes, but more than two-thirds of it is polluted. By next year, the province will order 241 polluters situated near the lake to take measures to control their waste output. Those that fail to do so after a certain time will face closure. The official said: 'Between 2000 and 2010, 90 per cent of the sewage from cities and townships in its basin should be treated and 30 per cent of waste water in rural areas treated.' There are moves to set up 43 sewage treatment plants near the lake. Taihu is included as a priority project for pollution control in the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1996-2000). The governments of Yunnan province and Kunming city are to spend 110 million yuan to stop waste water being discharged into Lake Dianchi. At present, 500,000 tonnes of waste water flow into the lake every day. Dianchi, at 300 square kilometres, is the country's sixth-largest freshwater lake and a major source of tap water for Kunming. Pumping stations and sewage treatment plants are to be built along rivers connected to the lake. The Yunnan official said the sewage flow would be checked after the projects - which are being funded by local government and loans from the World Bank - were completed next year. By the end of last year, three sewage treatment plants with a daily capacity of 210,000 tonnes had been built around the lake.