People picnic on the grassy roof of the Marina Barrage pumping station with a view of the Singapore skyline, Saturday, July 22, 2023. The barrage and the adjacent dam separates seawater to create a freshwater reservoir downtown, the city-state’s largest and most urbanized catchment area. Girls play on water drop statues, part of a promotional campaign to educate the public on water conservation, at Marina Barrage in Singapore, Saturday, July 22, 2023.
With no natural water resources, the country has relied on importing water from neighboring Malaysia via a series of deals allowing inexpensive purchase of water drawn from the country’s Johor River. But the deal is set to expire in 2061, with uncertainty over its renewal. “For us, water is not an inexhaustible gift of nature. It is a strategic and scarce resource,” Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said at the opening of a water treatment facility in 2021. “We are always pushing the limits of our water resources. And producing each additional drop of water gets harder and harder, and more and more expensive.”
Five desalination plants, which produce drinking water by pushing seawater through membranes to remove dissolved salts and minerals, operate across the island, creating millions of gallons of clean water every day.