With few natural sources, the tiny island nation spends billions to develop innovative ways to supply its own water.
Children show off 'water badges' after visiting Singapore's water-recycling complex [Kris LeBoutillier/ Al Jazeera]
Singapore, RoS - Drinking water has always been a strategic resource, all the more so in this tiny nation, as it lacks many natural sources of its own. Singapore has, however, recently employed technology, including introducing a rainwater-capturing scheme, to help quench its thirst.
Desalination and recycling - which now account for 40 per cent of the city state's water - have become vital sources, and Singapore even envisions water self-sufficiency in the coming decades. That will likely be necessary, as a long-standing water agreement with Malaysia expires in 2061.
A deal signed in 1962 guarantees Singapore 946m litres of Malaysian water each day - an agreement that has become a source of political friction.
"In 1965, when Singapore was declared independent, water was a strategic issue," George Madhavan, a director at the country's Public Utilities Board, told Al Jazeera.
Long-serving Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew made water a priority in 1977, ordering the clean-up of the few natural sources that had been heavily polluted.
"By 1987 much of the job of cleaning the rivers and repairing the sewers had been completed," said Madhavan. "The next stage was to create a series of reservoirs and to utilise the rainwater catchment."
Ben Goldfarb, editor of Sage Magazine, wrote that it would be in Singapore''s best interest to break free from water reliance on its neighbours.
"While Singapore benefits from access to cheap Malaysian water, its dependency is also a weakness that Malaysia exploits for political leverage," Goldfarb wrote.
'Marina Barrage' and reservoirs
The city state uses 1.7bn litres of water each day. Since 2006, Singapore has spent between $493m and $655m annually on research and technology to develop alternative sources of freshwater.
Singapore currently has four sources, termed "Four National Taps" by the Public Utilities Board. The first is a series of 17 reservoirs around the island, constructed to collect and store rainwater from canals and drains.
The second is the import of water from Malaysia through a large pipeline. An innovative water recycling effort, branded as NEWater, is the third, and desalination is the fourth. Depending on the season and the average rainfall, each "tap" provides a varying proportion of the freshwater consumed each day.
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| Singapore is a city of 5.3 million people |
Currently, NEWater and desalinated water make up around 30 per cent and 10 per cent of water demand respectively. The remaining 60 per cent comes from local catchment water and imports.
The catchment has become the most revolutionary and most vital source for Singapore. In the heart of Singapore's tourist and central business district, at the confluence of five rivers, the Marina Barrage dam has been created to capture water that drains down canals and eventually pours into a reservoir an estimated 100 square kilometres in size.
"Political will to manage water is extremely important. Singapore has taken this as a strategic challenge."
- George Madhavan, Singapore official
The Marina Barrage was once a tidal saltwater river and bay that ran through the heart of the city. Now, surrounded by business and tourist developments, the giant freshwater lake was created by the dam, which lets rainwater displace seawater.
The engineering is simple. When it rains during low tide, the dam's gates are lowered to release excess rainwater from the marina into the sea. If it rains heavily during high tide, the gates remain closed and seven giant pumps are activated, clearing up to 40 cubic metres of water per second.
The water is then pumped to a reservoir, cleaned and filtered, and distributed throughout the city into homes and businesses - completely safe to drink.
Before the barrage was created, during periods of high tide and heavy rains, much of the area around the bay would flood, including Boat Quay and China Town, both popular tourist destinations. Now, the water levels can be controlled through the barrage system.
"It's mismanagement that has led to water shortages around the world," says Madavan. "Political will to manage water is extremely important. Singapore has taken this as a strategic challenge."
A NEWater education
In addition to capturing rain, freshwater production and recycling has become a top priority for the Southeast Asian city-state of more than 5 million people.
Singapore also has a massive desalination project underway that is set to expand next year. Desalination plants here currently create 114m litres of water per day. A second plant will come online in 2013 that will supply a further 265m litres daily.
Desalination production has become much more environmentally friendly in recent years. In the past, flash distillation - the most common method - required 15 kilowatt hours of power to convert one cubic metre of seawater to freshwater. The current reverse osmosis seawater desalination method used by Singapore requires just four kilowatt hours of energy. The Public Utilities Board is working with Siemens, the German engineering conglomerate, on a new system that uses only 1.7 kilowatt hours per cubic metre of water.
NEWater, on the other hand, is simply recycled water that has been highly purified and cleaned, then piped to commercial buildings - specifically wafer-fabrication plants. Recycled water is a crucial element in the wafer fabrication and semi-conductor industry in Singapore, because it is ultraclean after reverse filtration, osmosis, and ultraviolet treatments.
NEWater is also seen as a way to teach Singaporeans about the importance of water conservation. A complex that opened in 2003 has been designed as an interactive and fun way to tell the water-production tale, as well as a way to drive home what happens if Singapore runs out. More than 100,000 people visit the complex each year.
Mas Shafreen Sirat from the Public Utilities Board's community relations division said Singaporeans currently use an average of 153 litres of water per day, and the government is trying to reduce demand to 140 litres by 2030.
"It is a scarce resource and it doesn't come easy," Mas said. "Singapore demands water sustainability and we are teaching young Singaporeans and all our visitors that it's everyone's responsibility."
Taken from here.
As mentioned in the article, Singapore is a tiny country with limited natural resources. Tall skyscrapers are easily found, but finding paddy fields is just like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, you can still see greeneries since the government of Singapore gave enough attention on planting trees to beautify the city as well as reduce the amount of carbon dioxide on air. Yet, Singapore still imports freshwater from its neighbour, Malaysia.
ReplyDeleteI want to expand the discussion to a wider scope. Do you know that there have been some research conducted by scientists saying that instead of oil, the crisis of freshwater would be the number one reason to cause the third world war? Then it will be a very complicated problem for countries without freshwater resources. On the other hand, it would be an advantage for countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and other nations located on the equator. Therefore, it is important for everyone to consume water wisely.
Singapore has always been lacking of natural resources yet it is still one of the most developed country in the world. It is the centre of finance in Asia and also a major hub of transportation. It is strategically located in the Strait of Malacca, one of the busiest strait in the world. Utilizing its strategic location and their human resources, Singapore has transitioned from a third world country into first world country in a single generation.
ReplyDeleteSingapore has been importing fresh water from Malaysia since its independence and has a deal until 2061. But, when the deal ends, how can Singapore survive without fresh water? In order to prevent the lack of fresh water in the future, Singapore has been developing technology to obtain fresh water. Desalination and water recycling using advance technology to obtain fresh water could sustain 40 percent of Singapore daily needs. By improving the technology and building new desalination plants, I think Singapore could achieve water self-sufficiency in 2061.
Although this article would sound melodramatic to some, I do think that Singaporean has the right attitude regarding clean water. Of all the waters in the world, only two and a half percent of it that are fresh, and fresh does not guaranteed that it is clean; moreover, most of our planet reserve of fresh water are in the form of ice within the polar areas. As Singapore does not have a lot of water sources; it is common sense that they would manage their clean water carefully. Actually cites around the world should start managing their clean water accordingly as it is crucial for the survival of their inhabitants. One city that I think should implement the same system as Singapore is my hometown, Jakarta. One of the main problem that we face is the fact that Jakarta is sinking; and the cause is people over exploit ground water. In my opinion, desalination and water recycling would be a proper solution for the issues of over exploitation of ground water.
ReplyDeleteI found this article very interesting as freshwater is needed in our daily life and Indonesia is very rich on natural resources. With the amount of water flowing in Indonesian rivers, I believe that there can be more water that can be optimized to be drinkable. The government could put filters and make waters drinkable. Even though this will make the price of water increase, it is also a way to force Indonesians to save water. Aside from that, the barrage could be a solver to floods that regularly happen in Indonesia. Before this system could be applied in Indonesia, there should be a massive cleaning done in the rivers of Indonesia. As we all know, Indonesia is on the 107th position for the world’s cleanest country. I personally think that this is because of our culture of not caring for the environment that we are living on. We still litter and pollute. Before Indonesia could be fixed by these technologies, we should vanish this bad culture of ours and start to grow care for our own environments.
ReplyDeleteSingapore is a tiny nation, yet its ability to incorporate technology and wealth to make up for its limited resources is astonishing. And also, the management of the resources available to them is also praiseworthy. Singapore is known to import its resources from neighbouring nations; as stated in the article, they import clean water from Malaysia.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that they recycle water through the NEWater system actually shows how Singapore, as a country deprived of abundant natural resources, understand the concept of scarcity of a resource, not only its government but its citizens as well. I can imagine if Singapore’s government does not carefully strategize on its water allocation, how dangerous it would be for the Singaporeans’ life and the shortage of water may cause a collapse of society in the country. Indonesia, on the other hand, has to take Singapore as an example to creating a better water distribution for its citizens and how to value a resource out of the fact that the scarcity the government try to overcome.
I sincerely believe that our country should copy Singapore in terms of awareness. Clean waters are an everyday need that always been neglected. We can see from the rivers here. At Jakarta, for example. There are still a lot of rivers heavily polluted because the citizens dump their waste inside the river. There are no realization to preserve clean water not just for ourselves, but for our future generations as well. The technology to create clean, drinkable water should be implemented in in areas with bad drought so that the population there would have easier access to clean water in their daily lives. Even implanting such technologies on areas near the sea is not a terrible idea. We don’t want to become a country where clean waters is so hard to come by, that we have to buy from other countries.
ReplyDeleteThe rise of this problem doesn't necessarily surprise me, as stated in the article and as we all know Singapore is a country with a very small landmass and thus very little natural resources. It is to be expected that they would be scrounging for resources if and when the supporting nations than they are importing resources from suddenly stops doing that. For a country like Singapore whose landmass only consists of 720 Km2 t only have farmlands of 1.14 Km2 it's hard to imagine how they would be able to feed an entire country with so few resources. They have realized this though, by looking at the examples in the article, it is stated that the country has four different sources of clean water, if in the future Malaysia decides to stop sending the water then they still have three viable options of obtaining clean water.
ReplyDeleteAh, Singapore, a beautiful small country which has the best standard of living (GDP) compared to all other countries in ASEAN. But at the end of the day, nobody is perfect; the same goes for country. Singapore is the 19th in rank for smallest country in the world which only 687km2 , in fact, it is only a slightly bigger than Jakarta (662 km2). From this reality, we can know that Singapore’s biggest problem is natural resources, and one of those is water. When i was a child, i went to Singapore and surprised with the recycled water from the tap, it was stated that the water recycled from urine. I was so surprised and did not belive it for a while; so i wait for other people to try that water first, in front of my eyes, then proceed to try it myself. What amazing is that it was about 11 years ago, Singapore could invent such an advance technology at the time. I am not going to be surprised if Singapore solve this problems at any time soon.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing to see how Singapore was struggling to maintain the supply of water for them. Especially, few years after the declaration of independence, Singapore natural resources for water was highly polluted. It was impossible for them to take it as an advantage. There was nothing they could do. The only way to fulfill the needs of water was to make a deal with Malaysia though it wasn’t good enough for Singapore because they were exploited politically by the Malaysian government.
ReplyDeleteNow, we can find many tap water in Singapore. It is the proof of the success story of how they survived the condition. It was a right decision for them to fight as hard as possible to gain a proper supply off water. If Singaporean government had done a weak policy about the water and being exploited by the Malaysian constantly, they wouldn’t have grown as amazing as they are now.
Singapore is one tiny country, with good technologies. I’ve visited Singapore for many times, yet the country itself never ceased to amaze me. We all know that Singapore doesn’t have a lot of resources, especially natural resources, as they actually were only built over a small island, and a lot of reclamated lands. One of the main issues Singapore has been dealing with since a long time is their fresh water. Singapore, as i mentioned before, is only a tiny island, surrounded by sea and salt water. The nearest land that have their own source of fresh water is Malaysia, so Singapore often imports water from their neighbor, to be exact, from Johor, Malaysia. Johor is the nearest city from Singapore, compared to Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. Singapore also starts to produce their own fresh water, by desalinating the sea water into fresh water, to be used by their people in their everyday life.
ReplyDeleteSingapore is a very small country with no natural water supply, aquifers, lakes or even a river to support their water demand. With 5,5 million residents, which consumes 400 million gallons daily. So one of singapore biggest threat to it’s people is water crisis, to face this problem Singapore has a water strategy that is arguably one of the most succesfull in the world. Four national taps, imported water from Malaysia, and recycle used water, is Singapore strategy to support their daily water needs. But the government problem about this strategy is to embrace the community to drink recycled water. To do that, the country had to get rid of the “yuck” factor. For its NEWater branding campaign, it bottled the recycled water with a label featuring a cartoon water drop with a gigantic grin and constructed a slick visitor center showing how the purification process works via games and interactive exhibits.
ReplyDeleteGreat job by the Singapore's government, give credits where credit is due. They care about the people of the country and that is something that we can take for an example. Geographically speaking, Singapore is in fact a small country with small land and limited natural resources. Yet the way the people of Singapore do business is just awesome and magnificent. They do know that they have limited natural resources, so they decided to maximize the use of resources to gain as much as profits possible. In this problem of water, we can really say that the Singaporeans are not in a crisis of water. They have enough to drink and to fulfill their thirst. However, as the article mentioned, they have a high percentage of water imported from the neighbor country. The percentage of water imported from Malaysia to Singapore is about 60 percents of the total water used for the people.
ReplyDeleteThey are not struggling to drink water and consume water daily, but the tendency to rely on neighbor country in the matter of water-needs has became a political issue. Therefore it is a problem that the government is trying to solve by funding and supporting more researches to conduct ways to make and preserve safe drinkable-water. They want to stand on their own and not to rely on the deal with Malaysia that stands until 2061. The process of making fresh and safe water for people either from the desalination or tap water are still ongoing to maintain or even improve the quality of water. If we see it from the business perspective in a short run, it is economically cheaper to just continue consuming the imported water from neighbor country, even the agreement stands until 2061. But in a long-run , we can’t really foresee what’s going to happen between these two countries. Unexpected things can happen and the relations can also break down at any time. So they just decided to start as soon as possible to make safe freshwater for the people. This is a great long-term business plan. Nice job Singaporeans.
DeleteSingapore's success in the eyes of the world cannot be separated from the figure of Lee Kuan Yew who never wanted to despair. Besides being successful in the economic field, Singapore is now the first metropolitan country in the world. Lee set strict rules in the country bearing the lion. According to Lee, he was very responsible for the country's progress.
ReplyDelete"I am responsible for a very young country. I have been in power since independence, and I have to make this country a success," Lee said
He said that he had to take decisions and choices carefully to continue to make the country progress, not backwards. Therefore, they made significant progress on the freshwater front. For more than half a century, Singapore received half of the fresh water needs from neighboring Malaysia. This is one of the agreements signed when Singapore separated from Malaysia.
However, this agreement is being threatened along with Malaysia's desire to reduce the pile of state debt. This water problem also makes relations between the two countries volatile again. In the first few weeks when he became Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad paid great attention to the country's debt of around 1 trillion ringgit (US $ 249.19 billion) due to corruption in the past. Mahathir has postponed several projects and cut the salaries of ministers. In an e-mailed statement on Monday, the Singapore Foreign Ministry said both parties must fully comply with all the terms of the agreement. When Mahathir led Malaysia, from 1981 to 2003, water supply was the cause of the two countries' bickering. Since returning to power, a second diplomatic relationship has stretched again after Mahathir stopped the high-speed rail project linking Kuala Lumpur-Singapore. Malaysia also plans to develop offshore banks that are subject to territorial disputes. Some observers predict Mahathir could revive a water dispute. Malaysia must pay a fine to Singapore if it cancels the fast train agreement as suggested by Mahathir.
ReplyDeleteEven though the land mass of Singapore is only 721.5 km², Singapore is one of the most developed country in the world. Singapore is s similar to Japan with its high technology, but low resourced land. This leads to Singapore having to manage its resources. Many would agree that fresh water is one of the most important things life, therefore a country should try their best to provide such needs. The NEWater system in Singapore shows exactly what I stated before. thorugh the process of recycling water Singaporeans able to overcome their low resourced clean water and stop importing clean water from Malaysia. Compared to Indonesia, Indonesia has one of the highest resourced country but yet not a lot of people realized that at some point Indonesia is going to have similar problem. On the side of Indonesia, the government should have made the people realized that water should not be wasted.
ReplyDeleteActually this awareness for clean water the one that Singaporean government already have. Due to the fact that Singapore is small country compared to Indonesia which has so many islands, hence they have lesser resources to support their daily activity if compared to Indonesia. In this case Singaporean government stressed the importance of clean water for daily consumption, which is an extremely important thing to support human being. The development of the technology to convert rain water into clean water safe to be consume by the citizen, I think Indonesia also need to apply or try to follow this steps, because Indonesia is a bigger country compared to Singapore and we also have a region where the level of availability of clean water are still need to be improve, such as the people who lived not near to the central district of the island itself, where clean water is a scarce resource for them.
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ReplyDeleteSingapore has always felt like a second home to me. The very first time I ever went to Singapore was when I was 5 so I grew up watching Singapore evolve. Singapore is a beautiful country that is ridiculously clean and tidy. Their airport, called the Changi Airport is truly beautiful and have won best airport several times. Although Singapore is very clever when it comes to doing their businesses, Singapore has always been a country that is lacking sources that are natural. Even their beach is not real. There are a lot of different things in Singapore that are made up because they don’t have the natural resources that are required. When I read that Singapore is obsessed with fresh water, I am not shocked. Singapore doesn’t really have a lot of water resource since their country is very small. Fresh Water is very important to a human being, it is definitely a need and a must in a human’s everyday life.
As we can see, Singapore is a very small country, but it is one of the developed country in the world, and it is even the only one in the South East Asia. Singapore can became a developed country, because of its citizens are not as many as other countries such as Indonesia or Malaysia. However, even Singapore is full of tower, good university, good manufactures, but you almost cannot find naturak resources there. I think that is why Singapore still needs fresh water from other cnoutry. At first, when i first visited Singapore in 2009, i think Singapore is a country where they can get their own fresh water, because as you can see, in almost every public places, you can find a spot like a washbowl, but it is actually not for wash your hands, but the purpose of its existence is so people can drink from that water. So i have never thought before that a country like Singapore will import fresg water from other countries such as Malaysia. But, after think long enough, i think it is not surprising though. Because Singapore is lack of natural resources.
ReplyDeleteSingapore is one of the few countries that never seem to stop being able to amaze me. A couple years ago, maybe four or five, I remembered seeing functioning LRTs in the airport and amazed that such a small country can have impressive technological capabilities. So I was not surprised when I read the article and found out that they probably already have a suitable solution to their water problem. I guess recycled water would probably be more than enough to support the people in Singapore, because the endless potential that it brings. I also think that they should stop being dependent on Malaysia for their water supply since dependency on neighboring countries is never good (cooperation/ teamwork is ok, but dependency? No.) I doubt that by the time the Malaysian deal is over (40 years from now) Singapore still need the water from Malaysia to survive. That is all.
ReplyDeleteLive their life among natural resources scarcity pushes Singaporeans to pursue technological advancement to thrive. There is no way out; innovate or die. The water management system is not only to supply freshwater to the households but also to manage surface water from being retained excessively in order to prevent flood. A question pops up in my head: what will it be if the system is being applied in Jakarta? With the similar area, but higher demand for water and flood being the main concern, the system will be so helpful to be adopted in Jakarta. After such numbers of disputes with Thames, Palyja, and Aetra, Jakarta has not reached the zenith of the water management system that can meet the whole demand of the citizen. Floods are also frequently occurring due to the poor water drainage in the city. Will there be a turning point under the management of PAM Jaya? Or maybe it needs the collaboration of public and private sector just like what the Singaporeans do?
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