Transforming our cities: On water, Singapore shows the way

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/transforming-our-cities-on-water-singapore-shows-the-way/

Written by Isher Judge Ahluwalia | Updated: April 15, 2015 

Most Indian cities suffer from acute shortages and poor quality of water. Singapore, a country whose water challenge was perhaps the worst faced by any country in theworld in the mid-1960s, has transformed its water scenario. We often dismiss outside experience as being irrelevant for India’s development efforts. With a water crisis staring urban India in the face, perhaps it is time we understood how Singapore turned its water story around.

Singapore imported 55 per cent of its water for consumption from Johor, in the neighbouring state of Malaysia, in August 1965. By proclaiming that “every other policy has to bend at the knees for our water survival,” Lee Kuan Yew, the iconic leader and first prime minister of Singapore who passed away recently, communicated to his people and to the world in no uncertain terms his government’s commitment to water sustainability. Singapore has successfully combined simple conventional means to capture and storerainwater and treat used water with innovative solutions, such as producing recycled used water and desalinated water to address the water challenge within a financially sustainable framework.

Singapore has neither much groundwater nor many natural freshwater bodies, and though its rainfall is adequate, its compact 710 square kilometres landmass poses a major challenge for storing rainwater. Up to the mid-1970s, rivers were not suitable catchments as rainwater would quickly get contaminated by the large amounts of sewage and pollutants that they carried. With only 5 per cent of land area as “protected catchment”, Singapore started demarcating a large number of “partly-protected catchments” where prior treatment of wastewater is mandatory before discharging it to the streams. Waterways were cleaned up to act as water catchments. The cleaning up of the highly polluted Singapore River, Stamford Canal and the Kallang basin, over the period of 1977 to 1987, made it possible later to use the river as a key urban catchment that fed into the Marina reservoir.The Public Utilities Board (PUB) of Singapore has been in charge of all elements of the watermanagement system: water catchment network, drainage and sewerage system, water treatment and distribution, production of clean recycled used water, and desalination. The basic philosophy is that “every drop of rain that can be captured, should be captured, and every drop of wastewater that can be safely reclaimed, should be reclaimed.”