The Island That Made Its Own Water

On an August evening in 2002, tens of thousands of people gathered in Singapore for the country's National Day Parade. At one point in the celebrations, the Prime Minister and other leaders raised bottles of water and drank.

It was not ordinary water. It had been made from the city's used water, the water that had gone down its drains and sinks, cleaned again and again until it was safe to drink.

To understand why a country's leaders would drink it in front of the whole nation, you have to go back almost forty years.

Rain, but nowhere to keep it

On 9 August 1965, Singapore became an independent country. It was a small island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, with about two million people, little land and no natural resources to speak of.

Rain was not the problem. Singapore gets plenty of it, in heavy tropical downpours. The problem was keeping it. There were no great rivers, no lakes and no mountains to hold snow. Much of the rain simply ran off into the sea.

A large share of the island's water came by pipeline from the Malaysian state of Johor, under agreements signed in 1961 and 1962. Singapore's new leaders, including its first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, knew that a country which depended on its neighbour for water could never feel quite safe. Water, he later wrote, shaped many of the government's decisions for decades.

So they set themselves a long goal: to make Singapore as able as possible to meet its own needs.

Catching the rain

The first step was to catch more of the rain that fell on the island itself.

Reservoirs were built and enlarged, and the land around them protected. Drains and canals were laid out across the island so that rainwater could be gathered and led into storage, even from busy built-up areas. Over the years, about two-thirds of Singapore's land became catchment for its water.

But water caught in a city is only useful if it is clean. In 1977, the government began a ten-year clean-up of the Singapore River and its neighbouring waterways, which were badly polluted. Backyard industries, pig farms and street-food stalls along the banks were moved, many to new sites, and sewers were laid. By 1987 fish had returned to the river.

Water used twice

The boldest idea came from the water that people had already used.

Engineers had studied for years how to treat used water to a very high standard. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Singapore's water agency, PUB, tested a careful process. The water is first treated in the ordinary way, then passed through very fine membranes, then through reverse osmosis, which removes almost everything but the water itself, and finally disinfected with ultraviolet light.

The result was given a name: NEWater. Plants began producing it in the early 2000s, and in 2003 NEWater began to be supplied. Most of it goes to factories, such as the plants that make computer chips, which need very pure water. A smaller share is added to the reservoirs, where it mixes with rainwater before being treated again for drinking.

Many people were uneasy about the idea at first. That was why leaders drank it in public, and why a visitor centre was opened where anyone could see how it was made.

A dam in the heart of the city

Singapore also learned to take water from the sea. Its first large desalination plant opened at Tuas in 2005, and more have followed. Desalination uses a great deal of energy, so it has been treated as one part of the answer rather than the whole of it.

Then, in 2008, the Marina Barrage was completed: a dam built across the mouth of the Marina Channel, in the very centre of the city. It shut out the sea and created a freshwater reservoir among the office towers, fed by rain from about a sixth of the country. The barrage also helps protect low-lying parts of the city from flooding, and its grassy roof became a place for families to fly kites.

Together, these became what PUB calls the Four National Taps: water from local catchments, imported water, NEWater and desalinated water.

A long patience

None of this happened quickly. It took decades of planning, steady investment and the trust of ordinary people, who were asked to save water at home, to accept a higher price for it, and to drink water they might once have refused.

The work is not finished. The second water agreement with Johor runs until 2061, and Singapore's plans reach beyond it, with more NEWater and desalination planned for the years ahead.

The country that once had nowhere to keep its rain now uses much of it twice.

Want to read more?

The Singapore Water Story by Cecilia Tortajada, Yugal Joshi and Asit K. Biswas is a full and readable history. Lee Kuan Yew's memoir From Third World to First describes how water shaped the young country's planning. PUB's website explains the Four National Taps.