"When that running water came back on, it was a completely wonderful feeling. It's been four days since I had a shower," taxi driver Cao Sijun, 46, said with a grin.

Local television showed the governor of Heilongjiang province, where Harbin is, drinking a glass drawn from the tap in a Harbin family's home after service resumed.

But the government warned the public that supplies that had been in the pipes for five days were too dirty to drink, although safe enough for housecleaning and laundry. Officials said they will announce on radio and television when the water is safe enough first to bathe in and later to drink.

The deadly Nov. 13 chemical-plant explosion in Jilin, a city upstream, was a political disaster for President Hu Jintao's government and cast a harsh light on the environmental costs of China's breakneck development.

Hu's government issued embarrassing apologies to China's public and to Russia, where a border city downstream is bracing for the arrival of a benzene slick 50 miles long.

A top Russian environmental official, Oleg Mitvol, said on Ekho Moskvy radio on Sunday that the nation will airlift 50 tons of activated carbon to treatment plants along the Amur River in a bid to absorb the toxicants.

State media in China have accused local officials of first concealing and then lying about the explosion, which killed five people and forced the evacuation of 10,000.

It was not until this week that the government said the accident dumped 100 tons of benzene into the Songhua. Benzene is used in the manufacturing of plastics, detergents and pesticides.

The announcement that Harbin would suspend water service triggered panic buying of bottled water, soft drinks and milk. Schools closed and residents stocked up on water in bathtubs and teakettles.

On Sunday, television cameras followed Heilongjiang Gov. Zhang Zuoji into the home of 75-year-old Pang Yucheng, where he drank a glass of boiled tap water.

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