Govt to spend $2b to tackle pollution
"Fighting land pollution will keep seas clean"
Importance of the sea
‘Singaporeans must also not forget that keeping the seas clean is not just to keep the coral alive and to have clear waters to swim and go boating in.
‘Eventually, the seas will be our own source of life — we shall have to depend on our seas for the water we need to drink, so we should be mindful of what we discharge into it.’
— Rear-Admiral (NS) Teo Chee Hean, Acting Minister of the Environment
THE Government will spend more than $2 billion over the next five years to tackle pollution problems, Acting Environment Minister Teo Chee Hean said yesterday.
More than $1 billion will be used for a new offshore landfill site and the rest will be used to expand sewage treatment facilities, he told The Straits Times yesterday.
Rear-Admiral (NS) Teo spoke earlier of the link between land and sea pollution, at a ceremony to honour volunteer divers who took part in a two-year coral reef rescue project.
He cited a 1990 United Nations Environment Programme report which said that land and air pollutants were estimated to account for & more than 75 per cent of all pollutants entering the world’s oceans.
He said that marine pollution essentially came from land-based pollution and shipping activities.
Pollution from shipping was often "more spectacular and attracts media attention, especially if a major accident or oil spill has occurred" he said.
But he added that pollution from land-based sources, I not properly treated, would ‘find its way through drains, rivers and finally to the sea in a continuous but unspectacular stream".
To ensure that Singapore’s coastal waters were pollution-free, a balanced approach to address these two sources of pollution was needed, he said.
This approach would affect not just the Singapore Straits but also the waters of the nearby Malacca Straits and the South China Sea.
He stressed that Singapore had spared no effort in developing the environmental infrastructure to deal with both sources of pollution.
Its systems for solid waste management, sewerage and drainage ensured that land-based sources of pollution
were kept well under control. "When the Singapore River is cleaned up, it is not just the river that is clean but, more importantly, it is the surrounding sea into which the river flows that becomes cleaner," he said.
Turning to control over pollution caused by shipping activities, he said that Singapore had proper reception facilities to handle slope and sludge from vessels.
Steps had also been taken to improve the safety of shipping in the surrounding waters.
For example, the port of Singapore had on its own invested in a Vessel Traffic Information System.
Its chain of radar stations gave advice to ships transiting the area.
These measures and the rigorous enforcement of antipollution legislation ensured that Singapore’s coastal waters had remained relatively~ clean, he said.
"Even though we are the busiest port in the world, our waters can support marine life, including coral reefs," he said.
He noted that on the regional level, Asean countries were committed to working closely on environmental issues of common concern.
"Such cooperative efforts must continue as Asean countries, being geographically close to each other, will always be confronted by similar if not common environmental problems," he said.
He presented certificates to representatives of 14 clubs who, for the last two years, took part in a coral reef rescue project.
More than 100 volunteers attended the event at the Singapore Telecom theatrette at Exeter Road.
About 450 volunteers have been relocating corals from a reef fringing Pulau Ayer Chawan, off Jurong, to Sentosa. The corals had to go because of a land reclamation project.
Source : The Straits Times, 5th June 1995
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