Singapore coming close to water self-sufficiency

Asia Sentinel: When Singapore’s newest reservoir was opened this weekend, it was billed as the garden city’s latest leisure hub, designed to attract boaters and picnickers keen to escape the hectic pace of urban life….It is the latest advance in the city-state’s drive to wean itself away from imported water from Malaysia and its concomitant political entanglements. In the process, Singapore has emerged as an unlikely world leader in water conservation, reclamation and desalination.

Singapore still sources around half of its water from Malaysia and frequent disputes over the water supply have dogged relations between the two neighbors virtually since the two became independent countries. But after billions of dollars of investment into transforming its water supply, Singapore is getting ever closer to the day when it will become totally self-sufficient, finally kicking one of the most poisonous bilateral issues into the long grass.

With no proper rivers of its own and a land area too small to collect enough rain water, Singapore has been dependent on water brought across the Strait of Johor ever since it gained its independence from the British. But despite the two long-term supply deals signed in 1961 and 1962, once Singapore was unceremoniously booted out of the nascent Federation of Malaysia in 1965, the water issue began to drive a wedge between the two.

It wasn't long before Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's first post-independence prime minister, was threatening to turn off the taps if Singapore pursued a foreign policy that was "prejudicial" to Malaysia's interests. Singapore's first post-independence leader and current Minister Mentor, Lee Kuan Yew, also said that he would have been prepared to send the troops in, if Malaysia had carried out an "act of madness" like cutting off the water.

…"I think it’s unlikely that there will be more problems between Malaysia and Singapore over water," added Kog Yue Choong, a Singaporean engineer and academic who has written on water security in Southeast Asia. "Many of the problems happened when Mahathir was in control but now the game has changed because the additional water sources Singapore has developed will reduce its vulnerability."

Couldn't find a picture of the Marina Barrage, but this is the Upper Seletar Reservoir in Singapore. Shot by Sengkang , Wikimedia Commons