NEWater Future? ould you like to drink a cool glass of treated domestic sewage? Well, I did at the Singapore International Water Week 2009 this past June. I, along with ES&T contributors Yi-Pin Lin, Pedro Alvarez (also one of our Associate Editors), and Mark Wiesner happily quaffed “NEWater” at the Bedok Water Treatment Plant and Visitors’ Center. (It must be safe because we are all still kicking.) At Bedok, we toured the latest technologies for microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet disinfection which reclaims treated domestic and industrial wastewater into potable water, trademarked and bottled as NEWater by the Singapore Public Utilities Board (PUB). JERALD L. SCHNOOR
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Treated domestic sewage never looked so refreshing.
Singapore’s Water Week brought together the International Water Association’s (IWA) sixth Leading Edge Technologies (LET) conference, an International Water Leaders Summit, and the Sustainable Cities - Infrastructure and Technologies of Water meeting. What fascinated me was the entrepreneurial flavor of the meetings, complete with backroom discussions by venture capitalists of pending billion dollar water infrastructure projects. While financial crises, recession, and 10.1021/es902153f
2009 American Chemical Society
Published on Web 08/10/2009
furloughs abound in the U.S. and Europe, it is a wonderful contrast of opportunity there. For the past 30 years, Singapore strategically planned to become a “hydrohub”, an international center for water technology, integrated water management, and global market development. They have succeeded. “The future of water is Asia,” proclaimed Paul Reiter, executive director of IWA at an opening dinner for LET. Based on the market for new water infrastructure in Asia and the developing world, he seems to have a point. The happiest person I met at the meeting was Sam Ong, deputy chief executive officer of Hyflux Limited, one of Singapore’s water treatment companies, who inked a deal that day to design and build two new desalination plants in Libya for $1.2 billion. China, the Middle East, and North Africa are Hyflux’s main markets, and they are currently constructing China’s largest membrane-based desalination plant in Tianjin. Singapore, sometimes called the “Switzerland of Asia”, provides a captivating case study in how to develop the water business by a city-state with virtually no resources. They import essentially all of their food and energy, and half their water, yet they have developed microelectronics, manufacturing, water, and banking industries to pay for it all. In the water industry, they have embraced “best practices” for sustainability and discovered that reclaiming wastewater is much cheaper than desalinating seawater. In the process, they have become leaders in reverse osmosis and membrane technologies for desalination as well. Serving Singapore’s 4.5 million people are four NEWater reclamation plants and one desalination facility all constructed in the past ten years. U.S. and European companies are quite active in the “hydrohub” that is Singapore. I spoke with executives from Black & Veatch, CH2M HILL, Siemens, and CDM, and all have opened global design or business technology centers there. Paul Brown, CDM’s executive vice president of global market development, agrees there is great opportunity in Asia. He told me that India is a wellspring of talent in fundamental mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering for the burgeoning water industry, but there is also a great need for creative people in “sustainable systems” who can integrate concepts in water reuse and management. U.S. and European engineers continue to play an important role there. I should be clear that Singapore is not yet practicing “direct potable reuse” of water on a large scale. The treated wastewater that we drink and is pictured in the photo is not publicly sold. Rather, it is recycled back to industry for source water, and a small amount augments the Marina Barrage public supply reservoir, conSeptember 1, 2009 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 9 6441
stituting “indirect potable reuse”. PUB is painstakingly educating the public in the process of its integrated water management plan. Of course, microcontaminants and pathogens are risks of reuse that must continue to be researched thoroughly. By bottling some of the NEWater and giving it away as drinking water for free (photo below), PUB is simultaneously demonstrating the safety of its product and winning the confidence of its customers. According to one survey, 98% of the people now believe that reclaimed NEWater is safe to drink, and my cab driver believed he was already drinking it (with pride). If there is ever a water shortage, Singapore is in a good position to practice
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direct potable reuse. They may be teaching the world a lesson about the social psychology of direct water reuse, while defining a vision for integrated water management in a water-short world.
Jerald L. Schnoor Editor
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