Singapore's largest NEWater plant begins commercial operations

Channel NewsAsia 3 Aug 09;

SINGAPORE : Singapore's largest NEWater plant at Changi has begun its first phase of commercial operations.

This came after the Sembcorp Changi NEWater Plant (SCNP) had successfully met the stringent quality criteria set out by the national water agency, PUB.

The SCNP has an initial production capacity of 69,000 cubic metres of NEWater per day. When fully completed in mid-2010, the facility will be capable of producing a total of 228,000 cubic metres of NEWater per day.

"This will make it Singapore's largest NEWater plant and one of the largest water recycling plants in the world," said Sembcorp, which has a 25-year water supply contract with PUB.

Mr Tang Kin Fei, Sembcorp's group president & CEO, said: "We are pleased with our successful completion of final testing at the first phase of the plant, as
well as the smooth delivery of our first flow of NEWater."

"We are continuing to make good progress and are ahead of schedule on the execution of the second phase of the facility."

The Changi plant will supply roughly 15 per cent of Singapore's current water needs. With this, NEWater will meet 30 per cent of Singapore's current water needs by next year.

Introduced in 2003, NEWater is one of Singapore's four diversified sources of water supply. The other three are water from local catchments, imported water and desalinated water.

Sembcorp is the third private company to supply water to PUB under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) approach.

The first two are Singspring and Keppel Seghers NEWater Development Co which own and operate the Singspring Desalination Plant and Keppel Seghers Ulu Pandan NEWater Plant respectively.

- CNA/al