Singapore’s First National Tap: Is the water catchment areas in Singapore

As Singapore is a small island, they do not have aquifers and lakes, thus they need to maximise whatever water they can harvest. And this includes the rainwater. Water catchment areas are areas by which rainfall is collected and purified for various uses. In Singapore, we currently have two separate systems to collect rainwater and used water. Rainwater is collected through a comprehensive network of drains, canals, rivers and storm water collection ponds before it is channelled to Singapore's 17 reservoirs for storage. This makes Singapore one of the few countries in the world to harvest urban storm water on a large scale for its water supply

Water catchment areas are usually located near coastlines, for example in Bedok or MacRitchie. Water collected in the water catchment areas are usually cheaper to purify as compared to used water. It increases the amount of water collected thus provides a ready source of usable water for the country to use. This allows Singapore to be self- sufficient. However, it is not very viable to Singapore as there is land scarcity and building water catchment areas require a lot of land, and this results in competition for land and there will not be enough land for other purposes.

Some examples of water catchment areas are the Marina, Punggol and Serangoon, but, of course there are many more




CREDITS; Google for images. And Singapore PUB website