Speech by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the official opening of Tuaspring Desalination Plant

Ms Olivia Lum
Executive Chairman and Group CEO of Hyflux

Ministers Vivian Balakrishnan and Grace Fu

Mr Tan Gee Paw
Chairman of PUB

Mr Chew Men Leong
CEO of PUB

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen

I am very happy to be here to open the Tuaspring Desalination Plant today. This is Asia’s largest seawater reverse-osmosis desalination plant and our second desalination plant after Singspring. It will triple the size of our fourth “National Tap”, which is desalination for providing potable water in Singapore together with our other three “Taps” - our local water catchments, our imported water from Johor, and NEWater.

Hyflux won an international competition to design and build this plant. It reflects Hyflux’s capabilities in this rapidly growing industry because theirs was the most unique and cost-efficient design. They generate electricity on-site and have reduced the cost of producing desalinated water. And it also was able to build the plant on budget and in record time. So I congratulate Ms Olivia Lum and her team! Well done!

Tuaspring is the latest milestone in Singapore’s water journey. We have come a long way since we became an independent nation in 1965. Then, we were almost totally dependent on our imported water from Johor. In Singapore, Singaporeans lined up at public taps for water, we had night-soil collectors because our homes lacked sanitation. Today, we are able to supply a large part of our water needs ourselves. We have resilience in our system - even if there is a drought, we are prepared. Singaporeans enjoy a clean and reliable supply of water, and modern sanitation everywhere. What was once our strategic weakness has become a source of thought leadership and competitive advantage. But we should not take this for granted because around the world, three quarters of a billion people lack access to clean drinking water. And every year, three and a half million people die of water-borne diseases – in fact the size of Singapore’s citizen population. And yet Singapore is in a privileged, comfortable, secure position.

How did we do this? First, with political leadership - treating water as a matter of survival and not just as an ordinary resource. As Mr Lee Kuan Yew used to say: All other policies would “bend at the knees” for our water survival. So, we enlarged our water catchment areas, cleaned up our rivers, upgraded our infrastructure, built the Deep Tunnel Sewerage System, built the Marina Barrage, sometimes over decades.

One major step which was a big political position was to price water properly in Singapore. It was a difficult decision because very few countries have done it and it affects every household. But it is the way to make people take water seriously, take conservation seriously, to minimise wastage and abuse. But it is not the only thing we do because at the same time as we price our water properly we also have U-Save to defray low-income households’ utility bills so that nobody is unable to afford the water which they need.

Secondly, we have got here through partnerships. The Government did not act alone. It enjoyed the support of Singaporeans – understanding our circumstances, keeping our catchments clean, cherishing this precious resource. We had collaborations with academia and industry, to explore and pilot new technologies and to develop our infrastructure for water in creative ways, through public-private partnerships like this one. And we are grateful for your cooperation and support.

Thirdly and a critical reason for our success has been the Public Utilities Board. It was established 50 years ago in 1963 with an important mission: To build up adequate and reliable sources of water to support our expanding population and economy. A decade ago in 2001, we made it the sole agency to manage the whole water loop, from water supply, to drainage, to used water and recycling back into the systems - treating used water to potable water as one whole cycle.

PUB has been the key to securing our water resources. They expanded our existing reservoirs - MacRitchie, Peirce and Seletar. They created new ones in Kranji or Bedok. They developed innovative technologies and schemes to collect rainwater from urban catchments so that today two-thirds of Singapore is a water catchment area. They promoted R&D to develop new sources of water, researching recycling water and desalination way back in the 1970s. Then, the costs were still too high; we did not implement it yet. But we kept an active interest and when membrane technology progressed and become cheaper and more sophisticated in the 1990s, PUB’s earlier work enabled it to launch NEWater and to implement desalination on a large scale. And so we developed our water industry, partnering researchers and industry to conduct joint R&D and growing the capabilities of our water companies which now operate in two dozen countries around the world.

So I like to thank past and present PUB Chairmen including Mr Lee Ek Tieng who planned our sewerage system and led the clean-ups of the Singapore and Kallang Rivers and commissioned the study in 1999 that led to NEWater. And the study was conducted by Mr Tan Gee Paw who became the next chairman and formulated Singapore’s first “Water Master Plan” in 1972 and continued the efforts to develop new water sources including NEWater and desalination. We are also indebted to the PUB officers and engineers for toiling silently behind the scenes, making sure that Singaporeans do not have to give more than a thought to safe, clean, reliable, affordable water supply. We appreciate your hard work on the tunnels, on the sewers, on the plants, on the clean water from our taps. And we thank you very much indeed.

We must continue to work together to secure our future needs for water. This is not an inexhaustible gift of nature, but a precious resource which we must husband and use wisely. The Government will continue to provide Singaporeans clean and reliable water supply. The PUB has a document “Our Water, Our Future” which contains its strategies to maintain a safe and secure water supply for another 50 years, for example by expanding NEWater and desalination. By 2030, 15 years or so from now, we will with NEWater and desalination, be able to meet 70 per cent of our water demand: half from NEWater - that means recycled, and one fifth of our water, 20 per cent, will come from desalination plants. We will in this process, extend our Deep Tunnel Sewerage System to western Singapore and cover downtown and Tengah New Town.

PUB will also be investing in R&D to develop water solutions that use less land and less energy. The National Research Foundation has allocated half a billion dollars for water technology research, involving more than 100 water companies and two dozen research centres in Singapore.

I hope Singaporeans will continue to help us by saving water and keeping our catchment areas and waterways clean because all of us have a part to play to keep our water future bright and secure. So now, I am very happy that we are declaring the Tuaspring Desalination Plant open!

Thank you very much.