A question for all.To both the rocket scientist typo and any Ah Beng may also answer too.I was thinking aloud of what the forumer "Trout" wrote.Decentralizing the process of water treatment that is.The bottom line is the cost.Let me repeat THE COST.Now,if cost is not a factor we could import water from Alps mountains and flush it down the toilets,right !.So what would be the most cost effective method to DELIVER water to our homes so that we can flush it all down the toilet & drains and yet have a little for human consumption too.The emphasis is on 'little'.&' delivery'..Why? Because out of a ton of water a consumer pays for ; hardly a small portion is actually consumed-for cooking or drinking.And that the logistics of delivery determines its cost effectiveness.
So the question is how to resolve this 'waste not and want not' problem so as to speak.
I toyed with the idea before I gave it up. The problem with decentralized water sources is how decentralized you want to go? Every HDB block or district? You need to consider the targeted storage amount and storage space. We have to realize Singapore is a dense urban country which means that piping in Singapore can look like CPU circuitry.
If decentralization is implemented on large scale, you either end up with a very large public service or outsourcing which you really do not want as you can expect companies to cut corners to make their profit margins. EU has bad outcomes for water privatization.
If they do decentralize massively and outsource and I am still in Singapore, I will buy Evian for bathing, drinking and washing. Problem RO membranes, is after X times of usage, it gets compromised and does not do the job well. This will be definitely cheaper than the foreseeable medical bills.
If you do not maintain it regularly, you end up with a whole assortment of problems. I let someone else explain what those are. So if the maintenance people do not come down often, you would be drinking seriously compromised waters. Let's face it. We are always drinking water that is contaminated from the point of absolute purity standards of 100 percent. But is the water contaminated from the standard that the concentration of substances overwhelms our bodies to remove them or accumulate to the extent they have side effects on us before we die a natural death? You know, kidneys, lungs and other organs are membranes, and not too different from RO membranes.
If organ growing and harvesting becomes viable cheap and readily available, well, some degree of contamination may be way ok. So we need to strike a balance of contamination levels that practically affect us of time or not and costs. Single substance toxicity is difficult enough. Cross substance toxicity is even more complicated and expensive to test for.
The investment costs, maintenance and replacement costs, plus potential law suit costs are substantial. One or two showcase of decentralized water treatment today is ok. It is still better to concentrate in a few places for water recycling to facilitate monitoring and control. Too many sites and pipes and membrane locations opens the can of worms of complexity and guarantees the probability of an incident reaching 1 very quickly. Rooftop rainwater collection and purification maybe more cost feasible to augment existing water supplies. I admit I have not thought through that carefully. But it seems NEA is more concerned with mosquitoes than water in Singapore. So rainwater collection is still disallowed legally. But great work in their fight against Dengue with more new cases. I will say less of H1N1 for our MOH Cow.
