Solving the world's potability problems

THE Singapore International Water Week (SIWW) has just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Within only one decade, it has become the most important global meeting on urban water and wastewater management. Thousands of the world's leading urban water experts and academics from different countries, chief executives and other senior officers of water utilities, business professionals and representatives of non-governmental organisations get together to discuss solutions to the world's urban water and wastewater problems. The focus of SIWW, not unlike the rest of the world, has been mostly on technology to solve the world's urban water problems.

After decades of work on urban water and wastewater management in some 40 countries around the world, we have concluded that there is no reason why urban centres of 200,000 or more people cannot have access to clean water that can be drunk straight from the tap without any health concerns. We already have the technology to make this possible, and a business model which would ensure both rich and poor households have access to clean water. People who can afford to pay should pay the full cost of water use. The poor - whose water bill exceeds 1.5 per cent of their household incomes - should receive targeted subsidies.

Equally, all citizens must be made aware that water is a limited and critical resource. They must use it rationally and efficiently. If this happens, total water use for domestic purposes will be reduced dramatically. Cost of treating bulk water will decline significantly. Since 80 to 90 per cent of water used in households return as wastewater, the quantity of wastewater that needs to be treated will decline as well. This will reduce significantly the cost of urban water provisioning.