By Mr Kwok
I recently had the privilege to be invited to provide a training session to the docents of the National Museum of Singapore. The topic was on the history of water quality in Singapore. Admittedly, history has never been my forte since my secondary school days. In fact, I used to thumb my nose at the subject. However, water quality is and it has always been my pleasure to share about this topic with all manner of audience and even from a historical perspective.
Click here for the full video of the talk.
Some Surprising Facts about Water Quality in the Past of Singapore
- Well water was used by the majority of the population in post-Raffles and pre-Independence Singapore.
- Contrary to the perception of well water being cleaned by percolation through the ground, most of the wells were little more than “diluted cesspools” due to inadequate design and unhygienic habits of the users. Long story short, human waste had a nasty habit of contaminating well water in those olden days.
- The use of rainwater was not documented though it would make perfect sense for the population to have harvested this resource. Rainwater is as clean as water can be without further treatment. For the older folks in the audience, they shared accounts in Singapore’s now extinct kampungs of the use of rainwater for irrigation, cleaning and washing but not for drinking.
- Perhaps already widely known though it bears mentioning here – the lack of clean water and the impending threat of an epidemic influenced the decision by the British to surrender Singapore to the Japanese in 1942.
- Do you know that in the 1960s, Bedok was the site for the implementation of extracting ground water (i.e. collecting well water on a large scale) to supplement our reservoirs? Unfortunately, the quantity of ground water was so abysmal that operation was quickly discontinued.
Concluding Thoughts on the History of Water Quality in Singapore
- From the perspective of water quality, we are starkly reminded of the inequality between the haves and the have-nots in the past. If you were a rich European or Asian in early Singapore, you have access to clean tap water from our early reservoirs. On the other hand, if you were a coolie staying in a cramped shop house in Chinatown, you were more likely to drink germ laden well water which led to diarrhea on a good day.
Fortunately, everyone residing in present-day Singapore equally has access to clean tap water of a quality standardised to modern requirements for drinkable water. - Looking at history from a scientific perspective presents certain unique challenges. The Science of yesterday was much antiquated compared to that of today. (To be fair, the “advanced” technology we are so proud of today will likewise become antiquated compared to that of tomorrow.)
Finding data about water quality from Singapore’s history is fruitless when our modern concepts of water quality were non-existent then. Imagine trying to determine the microbial contamination in drinking water when the existence of microbes had not even been accepted. This is not to mention the scientific instruments for analysing water quality were unavailable too. - Perhaps an important lesson in studying history is to realise that history is very much alive. Yes, Science and Technology have progressed over the years. Getting infected by Cholera is no longer a death sentence (at least not in modern Singapore) compared to both rich and poor in colonial Singapore. Clean water from the tap is almost taken for granted by all who have no idea how the system works behind the curtain.
Yet, human nature remains unchanged. Society still functions according to the rules of human nature despite the trappings of modernity. Inequality seems inevitable as the differences between the haves and the have-nots have shifted to other aspects of life. There are many good reasons to study history but to me, the main reason is it enables us to learn about ourselves and the social world we live in.
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