SIWW Diary

Posted by: Gerry O’Toole The Black & Veatch designed SembCorp NEWater Plant at Changi is one of the world’s largest dual membrane water reclamation plants.  The plant relies on state-of-the-art water treatment processes, which include micro-filtration, and reverse osmosis membranes as well as ultraviolet disinfection to produce NEWater, which is now able to provide for 30% of Singapore’s daily water needs [...]

Posted by: Gerry O’Toole A country/region is “water stressed” when annual water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per person. When annual water supplies drop below 1,000 cubic meters per person, countries face water scarcity leading to a lack of freshwater for drinking, bathing and cooking. Over one billion people suffer in this way.  Only 1% of water on the [...]

Posted by: Gerry O’Toole Moan, moan , moan. Why is everything needed in such a rush these days? Pity the poor Water Engineer! It seems like every time we finish a ‘fast track’ project, we sit back momentarily and say to ourselves something along the lines of ‘ Ah well, it’s over now and you can have a rest. You won’t [...]

Posted by Gerry O’Toole The weather in Singapore over the past few months has been very hot and recently exceedingly wet. In fact a couple of weeks ago we had a full month of rainfall in about 2 hours. This resulted in unexpected flooding of the main shopping area, Orchard Road as this picture shows.  So to my overseas colleagues, [...]

Posted by Gerry O’Toole The problem is this…SIWW arrives on our shores just at the moment the football (not Soccer) World Cup enters the knock out stage. This presents a real dilemma! Even though my own team, Ireland did not make the finals, after having being knocked out by ‘le main de Dieu’ – or [...]

Singapore’s The Straits Times daily newspaper today just happened to publish a very timely and good article on the thoughts of Professor Tommy Koh (among other duties, Chairman of the recent Water  Leaders Summit during Singapore International Water Week) and water expert Leong Ching PhD as to why Singaporeans should not buy bottled water. The main reasons [...]