Water quality won’t be affected by haze: Balakrishnan

SINGAPORE — If the haze reaches hazardous levels, some of the National Environment Agency (NEA)’s services, such as waste collection, public cleaning and even dengue inspections, may be affected by manpower shortfalls.

Nevertheless, the country’s water supply and the quality of drinking water will not be affected, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan yesterday assured as he laid out his ministry’s haze contingency plans.

He said: “As far as PUB is concerned, there’s no such thing as a stop-work order. Whatever happens, your water is going to continue to flow from your tap … (and) is going to continue to be good, safe to drink.”

Speaking to reporters after a visit to PUB’s Chestnut Avenue Waterworks, Dr Balakrishnan explained that the water agency’s seven water treatment plants are “highly automated” and have stockpiles of fuel and chemicals to produce drinking water.

PUB Deputy Director of Water Supply Plants Ooi Keat Guan said the agency has been monitoring water quality over the past couple of weeks and quality standards are “normal”, as per before the haze crisis.

Allaying fears that micron-sized particles that are present in the haze might be found in drinking water, Mr Ooi explained that PUB uses a multi-barrier treatment process in its waterworks that is able to remove these particles.

First, coagulants are added to “lump” particles together in raw water. These larger and heavier particles are removed in a sedimentation tank.

Next, the water is passed through membranes that can filter particles of up to 0.02 microns in size.

Lastly, the filtered water is disinfected with chlorine to remove bacteria and viruses before being pumped into the distribution system.

As for dengue inspections, Dr Balakrishnan said there was no let-up in the operations of the NEA’s vector-control team despite the hazy conditions last week as Singapore “is still in the danger period” for dengue.

Sending his condolences to the family of the 86-year-old man who died from dengue on Monday, he said the situation “illustrates that we are having to deal with two crises simultaneously”.

Yesterday, the authorities reported a fourth dengue death in five weeks— that of a 68-year-old Indonesian man who was being treated for dengue here.

Separately, NEA Chief Executive Andrew Tan said plans remain underway for Mr Ronnie Tay, 49, to take over the agency on July 1.

He added that Mr Tay — who was previously Chief Executive of the Infocomm Development Agency — had been understudying him for the past two weeks.

Mr Tan, 46, who has headed the NEA since 2009, will be attending an Advanced Management Programme overseas prior to his next posting.