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Straits Times, 11 Feb 05 Save our seas - for drinking by Radha Basu DR YAACOB Ibrahim's cruise down the Singapore River to help a volunteer organisation fish refuse out of the water last Sunday was no publicity stunt. The Minister for the Environment and Water Resources wanted to send a potent message: that Singapore's rivers and rainwater catchment areas eventually become our drinking water. Keeping them clean is therefore a must. But while much attention is paid to our inland waterways, no one seems to be talking - much less doing anything - about cleaning up another precious resource: Singapore's coastal waters. Protecting the seas is no less important, especially since they will soon become a source of drinking water too. Singapore's first state-of-the-art desalination plant to convert seawater into drinking water will open in Tuas later this year. The $200 million plant, which purifies saline water through a process known as reverse osmosis, is expected to meet one-tenth of Singapore's daily water needs. It will be able to provide 30 million gallons of water per day, enough to fill about 55 Olympic-size swimming pools. This makes it the largest reverse osmosis desalination plant in the tropics and the second largest in the world. Reverse osmosis involves passing saline water through high-pressure containers with semi-permeable membranes, which separate the salt and other 'impurities' from the water. Traditionally, one of the biggest problems of the desalination process has been ensuring that the water is free of silt, which can clog the membrane lining. Technology has overcome this problem. At the Tuas plant, for instance, the water will be subjected to sophisticated filtration processes to remove impurities such as sand and silt before it goes through reverse osmosis. These 'pre-treatment' silt-removal technologies may make up a significant part of the plant's price tag. It can therefore be argued that if the original seawater had less silt, treatment costs could be much lower. That Singapore's seas are laden with silt is no secret. There can be no better barometer of the health of the coastal waters than monitoring the coral life in the area. Conservationists say more than 60 per cent of the coral reefs around Singapore have been smothered to death by blankets of silt generated by land reclamation and the dredging of shipping channels. Underwater visibility has fallen from about 10m in the 1960s to an average of about 1.5m now. While laws are in place and enforcement swift when it comes to oil spills and other more visible marine pollution, there is little or no legal protection for the reefs and other underwater marine assets. Although the Urban Redevelopment Authority declared five southern islands - Sisters' Islands, St John's Island, Lazarus Island, Kusu Island and Pulau Seringat - a Marine Nature Area in 1996, nearly nine years on, no one is quite sure who is in charge or how much protection these areas are entitled to. Conservationists have been arguing for years that the reefs are fertile spawning grounds for an astounding 8,000 marine species and may contain as yet undiscovered treasures containing cures to deadly diseases. Then there is the islands' tourism potential as dive sites. But if these arguments do not sway the authorities, surely the need to protect Singapore's water resources must. It would be great if Dr Yaacob's next trip out would be a reef walk or a dive off one of the southern islands to press home the message that the need to keep Singapore's environment and water resources clean does not end at its shoreline. links Dr Yaacob Ibrahim's visit to our rivers About sedimentation affecting our coral reefs: Hantu coral life dying out fast by Radha Basu The Straits Times, 4 Feb 05 Related articles on Wild shores of Singapore |
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