Last night i was fortunate to view a program on TV - on how singapore tackles its water needs. For those not aware being a very small island, for long singapore has depended on a single pipeline supplying water from johor ( malaysia) - this runs across the causeway and has often been a stumbling block / negotiating tool - the british regiments during the second world war are said to have capitulated to the invading japanese - because they captured johor and turned off the water supply to singapore....
Faced with a rapidly growing population and acute water shortage, what did singapore do??
The main problem for singapore was not lack of water - they had more than adequate rains -but the biggest problem for singapore is its size - having a population of 4 million cramped into such a small area 692 sq kms - there is not enough land to store water.
So singapore embarked on three ambitions projects -
1) Water recycling - recycle sewage - and for this they had to construct a brand new systems of drains - and where did they do that - they dug underground - sometimes 10 -11 stories deep- deeper than the mrt ( metro train system) and constructed monster canals to bring the raw sewerage to a state of art recycling plant
3) Lastly and the most ambitious - mind blowing to me - as they did not have enough land to construct a reservoir ( pity situation in india with so much of area) - they came up with an ambitious project to dam one of their estuaries and use it as a reservoir. and at what scale - the Marina Barrage - With a catchment area of 10,000 hectares, or one-sixth the size of Singapore
> > 3) Lastly and the most ambitious - mind blowing to me - as they did > not have enough land to construct a reservoir ( pity situation in > india with so much of area) - they came up with an ambitious project > to dam one of their estuaries and use it as a reservoir. and at what > scale - the Marina Barrage - With a catchment area of 10,000 hectares, > or one-sixth the size of Singapore
great work. reminds me of veeraanam. a chola king excavates the lake using armed forces during peace ime. and a thousand years later it serves the capital of tamilnadu 250 km away.
another tidbit. maladives supposedly would go into the sea in another 50 years. people are painting a picture of gloom. what is not reported is that it has already experimented on creating an atrtificial island much higher than sea level rises. their future plan is to link 16 or so islands, raise them much higher than sea level and create a rainfall reservoir inthe middle. check it out.
> maladives supposedly would go into the sea in another 50 years. > people are painting a picture of gloom. what is not reported is that > it has already experimented on creating an atrtificial island much > higher than sea level rises. > their future plan is to link 16 or so islands, raise them much higher > than sea level and create a rainfall reservoir inthe middle. > check it out. > > regards > venketesh > hi venketesh
Singapore has similar plans - of building a sea restraining wall all around its coastline...was shown in the same program. made us joke, only thing left would be to create a giant glass dome - would be straight out of a sci fi flick