Despite the water cutoff, the Harbin Taiping International Airport in northeast China is still running in a normal manner, said a local government source on Wednesday.

An official with the airport said the airport has not been affected by the cutoff since Wednesday because it has adopted an independent underground water system not linked up with the city water supply system.

Four wells pump water from underground that is quickly supplied to the airport after disinfection and filtration.

The official said the current water supply in the airport now can meet the demand of all its 50 scheduled flights every day.

The restaurants, coffee houses and toilets are all normally run in the airport.

The airport has six international air routes, linking the city with major cities in Japan, the Republic of Korea and Russia, all of which have not been affected.

The municipal government cut off the water supply of the city’s urban areas early Wednesday morning, for fear that a chemical plant blast on November 13 may have caused leakage of poisonous substances into the Songhua River, which supplies water to the city.

The city of over 3 million population provisionally resumed interrupted tap water supply later on Wednesday after confirming the exact time of arrivals of chemical pollutants from its water source of Songhua River as of Thursday morning.

(Xinhua News Agency November 24, 2005)