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Would You Drink This Water?
theodp writes "NEWater looks like any other glacier-clear bottled H20. Except, reports Salon, it gushes from the toilets of Singapore instead of a bubbling spring. NEWater is the product of Singapore's new water-treatment system, and it's wastewater that's been purified through advanced synthetic membranes called ZeeWeed, which could help 20% of the world's population that doesn't have easy access to clean water."
Try this FREE article from the Syney Morning Herald. or pay Salon to read it (or Salon will allow you to sit through a commercial and then you get a free one day pass).
http://www.busyweather.com/
Hmm. Brit joke only, methinks.
I'd drink the water.
it gushes from the toilets of Singapore instead of a bubbling spring
That is DISGUSTING. I don't think I will be drinking any water today. And thanks for adding 'gushing'.
Free XBox, PS2
Then it's still kinda disgusting.
No
sweet, sweet singapore toilet water.
ahhhhh....
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Most water we drink today have been recycled from sever/toilet treatment plants anyway. This is nothing more than nonsensical urban FUD.
An H2O molecule is an H2O molecule, is an H2O molecule. If the water is truly purified (A chemical/spectral/whatever analysis can find that out) it really doesn't matter. Should I remind people that the water they drink is pumped from rivers, lakes, and wells where animals (submarine and above ground) piss in it all the time? With a well, nature filters it out using the soil. Other methods require us to perform filtering to clean the water and remove any pollutants we added.
:-)
I'm not even going to go into closed system water recycling...
In other news, does the name mean "NEW Water" or "Any Water"? Both names seem somehow appropriate. Perhaps it was an intentional double-pun?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
If it's good enough for the dog...
Is pretty much what one would have to be smoking, before one might consider drinking water from an Asian toilet.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
... has been circulating for years and was likely piss at one time or another anyway, who cares what the filtration system is (ZeeWeed or natural aquifer) so long as one verifies the output is clean water.
I think it was Tom Robbins who postulated that life was invented by water as a means of transporting itself from one place to another?
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
I'll stick to Reverse Osmosis for my filtering needs.
Wow, how new the information that water is being purified and then reused. Water treatment plants have been doing that for the past century and most of it is redistributed as drinking water.
Probably it was the c0o1 name of the weed to merit a story here.
You lost me at gushes.....
But we don't get squeamish about drinking, say, rainwater, when some of it may have evaporated from rivers of sewage. I guess there's a psychological stigma to water recycled artificially, since we *know* where it came from.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
if these people don't have access to clean water, i think they'll trust the cleaning method and go for this. the only reason they would have for not accepting it would be if they were rich enough to buy clean water from a more reliable/comforting source (like, one with water that hasn't been in a toilet). either way, people need water right?
I'm against picketing but I don't know how to show it.
Well, if you take away all the shit and poisonous substances and microorganisms, what you get? Plain water.
....fish fuck in it
This company plastered incredibly funny billboards all over northeastern pennsylvania to gauge what kind of marketing buzz they'd get from the idea of recycled water.
... when I read this writeup, my eyes skimmed over to the "Will the Red Sox Win the World Series" poll and I saw all those "no" options.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
You might be thinking mmm Tasty, but what about the people of singapore.
here
NEWater is Reverse Osmosis Water
NEWater is the product from a multiple barrier water reclamation process. The first barrier is the conventional wastewater treatment process whereby the used water is treated to globally recognised standards in the Water Reclamation Plants.
The second barrier is the first stage of the NEWater production process known as Microfiltration (MF). In this process, the treated used water is passed through membranes to filter out and retained on the membrane surface suspended solids, colloidal particles, disease-causing bacteria, some viruses and protozoan cysts. The filtered water that goes through the membrane contains only dissolved salts and organic molecules.
The third barrier or the second stage of the NEWater production process is known as Reverse Osmosis (RO). In RO, a semi-permeable membrane is used. The semi-permeable membrane has very small pores which only allow very small molecules like water molecules to pass through. Consequently, undesirable contaminants such as bacteria, viruses, heavy metals, nitrate, chloride, sulphate, disinfection by-products, aromatic hydrocarbons, pesticides etc, cannot pass through the membrane. Hence, NEWater is RO water and is free from viruses and bacteria and contains very low levels of salts and organic matters.
At this stage, the water is already of a high grade water quality. The fourth barrier or third stage of the NEWater production process really acts as a further safety back-up to the RO. In this stage, ultraviolet or UV disinfection is used to ensure that all organisms are inactivated and the purity of the product water guaranteed.
With the addition of some alkaline chemicals to restore the acid-alkali or pH balance, the NEWater is now ready to be piped off to its wide range of applications.
In fact, RO is a widely recognized and established technology which has been used extensively in many other areas. This includes the production of bottled drinking water and production of ultra-clean water for the wafer fabrication and electronics industry. RO is also becoming increasingly popular as one of the technologies used in desalination of seawater for human consumption. It is also used to recycle used water to drinking water on space shuttles and on International Space Stations.
They already have this on the market. Its called Dasani.
_
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That's spelled WeeWeed.
I'm sure NASA has looked into using this for providing drinking water to astronauts on extended stays in space. I think it's been suggested that this method could be used on the 9 month flight to Mars. That makes me wonder, where does the ISS get its' water from?
Don't drink the water
Don't drink the water
There's blood in the water
Don't drink the water
'Same speed C but faster'
Oh yeah, also, germs can't survive on a cold porcelain toilet, so let's all just eat our dinner off the shitter. It's perfectly safe!
An H2O molecule is an H2O molecule, is an H2O molecule
The next time your beer tastes 'funky' and your roomie is smiling...
Free XBox, PS2
I guarantee that the vain people of the world would purchase it for $3.50
NEWater, the purity of Singapore's natural springs now availiable to your home or business.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
New meaning for Eau de Toilette
NEWater is the product of Singapore's new water-treatment system, and it's wastewater that's been purified through advanced synthetic membranes called ZeeWeed, which could help 20% of the world's population that doesn't have easy access to clean water."
You see where this is going, right? You find some damn way to purify pee and poop water (along with the odd cigarett butt and chunder) and everyone will have cheap water. And as human nature goes, they'll consume it to the limit, futher putting strain on ZeeWeed and toilets.
Heck, you'll probably be required to flush your toilet in the event of a national water shortage...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Sure, I'd drink it. Certainly wouldn't pay any more for it than standard tap water though.
As a Singaporean, I have personally drank Newater during one of our National Day Parades. It was given out to all the spectators of the parade. There ain't much to the taste, if you ask me to put it to a taste, I'll say it taste rather like distilled water.
Newater is currently pumped back into reserviors from the plants instead of being directly piped for comsumption. It is also currently used industrial purposes in Singapore too.
Out friendly neighbours Malaysia also had a field day making remarks such as "Singaporeans are resorting to drinking their own pee" and stuff as we had some bilateral issues regarding the sale of water from Malaysia to Singapore. This is one of the reasons why Newater technology is developed in Singapore.
You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.
That being said, what happens when one process or another fails in this NEWater. Would it be catastrophic, ie Hepatitis or something in bottles? In nature, the process is long enough that a failure or two may not matter. With our potable drinking supply, failure can lead to some bad things - but not on nearly the same level as if it was directly processed wastewater.
I think I'll wait until this has been proven in practice for quite somke time.
No.
;-)
:-)
More like an Engrish speaking ad-agency could not spell right
I think it means "any" water, because I've observed that a lot of teenagers tend to use "ne" as a chat substitute for "any" ((especially common in Asia).
"ne1 here?" --> That's just a sample
Mmmmmmm..... Singapore toilet water.....
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Now we know why many sicknesses start out in asia. (Sars, Bird flu, etc..)
Given his environmental record, if Bush gets in again this year, we'll ALL be drinking water like this. Except it won't be filtered to this level.
where's the caffeine?
GeneralKael -- Slacker Extraordinaire
I don't drink water; fish fuck in it.
Perfume? I couldn't help but remember my high school french class where I learned what that "eau de toilette" label on the perfume bottle translated into. I guess now we'll have to double check if we're drinkin it or putting it on for the scent.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
Hello,
While it may not sound appealing, water has been recycled for millions and millions of years now, so this is not such a new thing after all. What is novel, though, is how the water is being filtered, and, of course, that a government is getting into the business of selling bottled water.
If we are ever to have a lasting presence in space, it is technologies like this which will be needed.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
Is the filtering system good enough to filter out prions? Or could this be another way to get mad cow disease (from rendering plant waste water, or an infected person's urine/feces)?
I could see this being big like the personalized iPods. Personalized NEWater that's been recycled from your favorite star's very own "waste water". You could buy Madonna flavored NEWater and be sure that it comes from a kosher Kaballah source. Or for those a little more daring, try the new Keith Richard's flavor, "Just like his blood, it's refreshingly recycled." Seriously, there's money to be made here.
"You know Myra, some people might think you're cute. But me, I think you're one very large baked potato."
In space the astronauts process thier own urine to make water. H20 is H20. actually the "natural spring" water probably has alot of toxic junk in it. The only thing I can say is that totally pure H20 has no taste nor is it very nutritious. Its better to add some minerals ions to give it some taste.
As long as it's been treated, it's fine. Remember the water cycle, it's likely the water you're drinking now was probably someone's (or some animals) piss at one point.
This is just pure FUD. Guess how water ended up in that bubbling spring?
Some one else watched too much Law and Order for this to be today's posting.
But to the question posed F*** NO !
All it takes is one little perf in the membrane and that batch is contaminated, whats wrong with desalination of sea water for bringing water to the masses ? Yeah it requires energy , but solar is GREAT for it, this requires energy too, is it cost effective ?
Given that this gives people in the world a better option than drinking the contaminated water they have, I'm all for it and would drink it. This will help in so many areas: 1. Clean water for drinking and cooking. 2. Less diseases spread. 3. Possibly less conflict over water rights in certain areas. Just my two cents...
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke
The way
smokin craq and ZeeWeed, keeps the mind at high-speed.
wastewater is teh hit, im smoking too much o'dis'shit.
nuff said
...than water from a mountain stream that has bacteria in it. Every bit of water on the earth has been cycled through some organism or another before it reaches me anyway.
Put some caffine in it and I bet most /.'ers would drink it!
So this is not news, it's ignorance from the poster of the story. Like I said: no news, nothing to see here, move along.
If you live near a reservoir, go and look at that. Scum floats on it, fish crap in it, the odd sheep or wading bird dies in it. And then it gets treated and you drink it. What exactly is your problem with what Singapore is doing, people?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
If you were one of those people who didn't have access to clean water I think you'd take the risk of drinking fish pee in order to survive!
-Mike Whitehurst www.mike-whitehurst.co.uk
Which works well for particles, but not so for anything in solution. Los Angeles water from Owens River is high in salts and is run through ground wells to remove some of it, but the wells are overused and the salt content of the city's water is increasing. Saline content of Colorado River water is on the rise, too, as the water has been reused many times, some for agriculture which means trace amounts of pesticides.
A side note... I used to live in Midland, Michigan, years ago and the director of the water treatment plant had the last name of ... Filter. Not making it up, it's true.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I used to work for the Water Utilities Department in San Diego. We had an experimental poo water to drinking water facility, but they were fighting the same perception issue. Desalinization was dirtier and more labor intensive to get 2x the impurities.
:) They didn't exactly have dixie cups and a spigot at the end.
And no, I didn't try any of the processed water, either.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Is made of people!!!!
"It's not the despair, I can take the despair, it's the hope that's killing me!"
I agree.
For those of us living in Southern Ontario, our water comes from Lake Ontario. Is that any better?
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Ok, I read the article, but I just not sure about one thing. Do they really expect people to buy and drink this stuff??
Im all for recycling, but that is a mental hurdle that I doubt people will be able to overcome.
On a trip to Mars, astronauts will have to drink recycled "grey" water (washing, dishes,...) and recycled "black" water (you guessed it). Recycling will most likely be biological where the organic content is consumed by algae under strong UV illumination. The algae then become part of the food again....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
This is old news .. it has been listed as part of the massivechange.com project for a long time. In fact we had some in our studio and it wasn't bad at all to drink :P
The link to that story is here.
Do you get the munchies after drinking it?
"...which could help 20% of the world's population that doesn't have easy access to clean water."
This isn't a cheap mechanism for purifying drinking water. The ZeeWeed filters are used to further filter water with a low level of solid pollutants within an existing water purification plant. This isn't some magic method of providing unlimited clean water for the world's poor.
http://jfin.org/jFin pure java open source financial library
It's pronounced "New Water". Well, the promoters pronounced it as such, anyway.
!sig
This has been popularly rumoured. Anyone got any information on what exactly they mean / how they work out its seven?
I'd wager that anyone who lives on the Mississippi south of St. Cloud, Minnesota is drinking water that has been used to flush all manner of human excrement. Minneapolis gets its water from the river and we all dump purified sewage waste back in about 25 miles south.
How would you like to live in New Orleans, or drink the tap water in Memphis?
... to the AC. I read the post again and realized it was a crack on The Shawshank Redemption, not a commentary on TR's views. The election season's really getting to me...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
We freak about purified water that comes from a questionable source, yet most of us probably think nothing about cooking with tap water (I certainly have no idea where my tap water comes from, other than the faucet).
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
What is H-twenty anyways?
I just realized something. Maybe that's why this company's worldwide headquaters is in Oakville.
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Well, we're literally going to piss on the 3rd world
Until the bottled water craze really took off a few years ago, what do you think everyone in the USA and Canada (and half of Europe) was drinking? What comes out of your tap is recycled water in most cases-- just like this.
When I had a paper route as a teenager, one of my customers was the local water treatment plant. They gave me a personal, guided tour. It was pretty cool. Up til then I really hadn't thought much about water purification, and afterwards I just didn't worry about it. They did a great job, and everyone was healthy as could be.
I have no problem drinking water like this. I would have a problem paying bottled water prices for it anywhere besides a third world country.
I think it's a good idea, although not so new.. But there are still a lot of places where there is not much water, like on islands, maybe this thing could help.
CowboyNeal fucks in it
Would you drink this Miracle Water from Christian Evangelist Peter Popoff that has been blessed by the grace of god, proven to cure all ailments?
Mwt Would you drink this water?
NEWater looks like any other glacier-clear bottled H20. Except it gushes from the toilets of Singapore instead of a bubbling spring.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Corrie Pikul
printe-mail
Oct. 22, 2004 | The promotional bottle for Singapore's NEWater looks like any other bottled water, right down to its snappy name and bright label. And it tastes the same as other premium bottled-water brands -- maybe even better, if you prefer the metallic edge of Evian to the airy sweetness of Poland Springs. But while NEWater is transparent, its story is not, and it's frankly not terribly appetizing.
NEWater is the product of Singapore's new water-treatment system, and it is wastewater that has been purified through advanced synthetic membranes called ZeeWeed. That's right: The crystal-clear NEWater that gushes through the country's faucets isn't gurgling from a mountain spring. Most recently, it was flushed from a toilet.
The water is first treated in a traditional water plant before going through a three-stage purification that uses high-quality ZeeWeed membranes, which filter out even the most microscopic bacteria. By the time it's processed, NEWater meets all the drinking-water standards specified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization.
Don't panic. There is no plan to bring NEWater -- or anything like it -- to the United States anytime soon. "It's unacceptable to [U.S.] consumers to drink their own waste stream," acknowledges Ashok Gadgil, an Indian-born environmental physicist who works at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (though he quickly points out that astronauts use the technology in long-term outer-space trips).
The great promise is that this and other new technologies can, in some way, help solve an increasingly dire global water crisis. Nearly 20 percent of the world (1.2 billion people) does not have easy access to clean water -- 400 children die every hour from water-borne causes, according to Gadgil. And even in developed countries like the United States, fear of tainted water is on the rise -- and not just the non-kosher copepods that sneaked through New York's filtration system this summer, worrying Orthodox Jews.
In the United States, sand filtration systems have traditionally been used to remove particles and sediment from our surface water, which is then treated with chemicals like chlorine. But some strains of bacteria, including Cryptosporidium, have started to develop immunity to chlorine. In 1993, the microscopic "crypto" parasites spread through the municipal water systems of southeastern Wisconsin, causing an outbreak of a flulike disease that affected more than 400,000 people and killed approximately 100. While the outbreak has been linked to the inadequate treatment of drinking water taken from Lake Michigan, no specific source of the Cryptosporidium was ever identified. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that in the past 20 years, crypto has become recognized as one of the most common causes of waterborne disease within humans in the United States.
While the CDC assures us that the American drinking-water supply is normally safe, and that it has been taking precautions to handle outbreaks like the one in Wisconsin, it issues a reminder on its Web site that disease that spreads through water is still a very real problem. Crypto may be found in drinking water and recreational water in every region of the United States and throughout the world.
Membrane technology may also help the United States protect itself from terrorist attacks on the nation's water supply. Some membranes could act as a reliable barrier to contaminants such as sarin and anthrax. However, membranes can screen only water that goes into the treatment plant. Once it leaves the plant on its way to individual homes, water again becomes vulnerable, which is why government researchers stress that a viable water-security strategy must consist of two parts: treatment
I actually don't have a problem with this. Nature does the same thing with its water cycle, only slower. This is just speeding up the process. As long as I'm certain that the water is truly purified then I'm cool with it.
Nothing but pure grain alcohol for me from now on!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
our favorite. It's all in the water. That's why it's yellow!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I seem to recall Kevin Costner doing this in Waterworld (1995), so at least the idea has been around for quite some time. Its funny that desalination has been around for awhile and he uses the urine->water method when on the open sea surrounded by salt water.
this supposedly happened a few years ago. It seemed appropriate...
"In Italy, a compaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into Schweppes Toilet Water!" (source)
This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
The only problem that I can see is that the treatment process is run in a country like Singapore. It is not a Western nation and does not have the same quality standards that exist in the West: Japan, USA, Canada, etc.
Singapore is a Chinese society. I would not consume any food or drink exported from Singapore.
I, however, have no problem with Dasani, manufactured by CocaCola. Dasani is purified water from city sewage.
is beer!
Seriously, having working in the IT sector of water treatment (yes there is one), I can say that, at least in Southern California, the water from the tertiary plants are cleaner than from your tap.
At one particular tertiary plant wastewater is dumped in basins, allowed to filter through the ground, then extracted via well pumps. The water is then run through one of the largest UV light arrays that I've ever seen. Impressive.
Done right reclaimed water is viable.
"Give me taste, give me funk, give me fury, gimme some more."
.... of my water here in L.A., minus the filtering.
Isn't all water recycled? By some way or another? Either Pepsi, MotherNature, or by anyone else?
I guess the trick is to get water that is cleaner then what is readily available.
As long as you put it in a bottle and give it a fancy name, people will pay to drink it.
In other news, the water cycle doesn't give a shit.
Also, trees will convert carbon from farts and minerals from all sorts of shit into the food you eat.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It's even worse than that. The fork of the Mississippi that runs into Chicago used to flow into Lake Michigan. Chicagoans got tired of their filth, however, and set up some explosive charges to reverse the direction of the river. Thankfully, a court order was obtained to stop the procedure at the last minute.
:-)
Only one problem. Being typical Chicagoans, some unknown entity detonated the explosives in the middle of the night. The river's flow was reversed, and all of Chicago's crap now flows into the Mississippi.
You're welcome.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
In Britain you can (if you'd really want to) go on tours of sewage treatment facilities. One of the highlights is drinking the water that comes out of the end of process (to prove the point that they really do clean the water before they dump it back into the rivers). It's really not that bad at all...Is the idea of pumping this treated water back into the mains really that new an idea?
Pipe dreams my friends. As wonderful as it sounds, the realities of implementation are far more severe. You can lure the investors, but don't blow smoke up my ass.
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Great, something else for Charlton Heston to get in a tizzy about!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
ZeeWeed is people! Tell everyone!
What about this: http://www.johnellis.com/
Any possibility that water molecules actually do posess memory?
They're dumping Microsoft.
For Christ's sake -- it's friggin' water. You drink water because you're thirsty. You don't drink water because you want it to taste this way or that. If you do, then you're drinking tea. Or soda. Or beer. Or dirty water.
And that's really the issue here -- is it DIRTY? HORRORS! Could it have been pissed, pooped, or fish fucked in? Christ -- every drop of water on this planet, I would think given my crappy government school science class-based environmental education, has been pissed, pooped, or fish fucked in at some point.
Taste is only a factor if the damned H2O doesn't taste like, well, H20 -- that taste is called WATER. There is no variant to it, unless it's dirty.
I don't see what the damned big deal is. They're recycling. Enjoy their efforts.
IronChefMorimoto
FYI, this is old news. Started in 2002, and I was given a bottle at the Singapore National Day Parade (2002).
So, it's mega filtered. Yes, the concept is *yech*, but astronauts and others do this type of reuse.
It's a water issue in the area driving it, like it will in other places sooner than later. Malaysia and Singapore don't see eye-to-eye on fresh water rights...
So before you condemn, it's still better than many 'local', rural water sources to the north.
Sorry to sound all "sick" and all...
When you take a dump and the log hits the bowl... um it's not entirely cleaned out when you flush. So no. even with pristine clear perfectly clean water coming into the bowl it wouldn't be safe to drink.
What the fuck is wrong with people? Holy crap literally!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Well, i'm singaporean and i must admit the locals were a tad squirmish with the whole idea when it started. but then again, singapore's a small country, and a step toward self dependence on essentials like water means greater political bargaining power.
While the UK is lucky in that it always rains...
The climate may be wet, but don't think that there isn't also a great deal of treatment/recycling going on. Legend has it that in central London, the water coming out of the taps has on average passed through seven bodies before it reaches you.
This becomes a particular concern when you think about what people put in their waste water that can't easily be filtered by treatment plants, drugs such as antibiotics or contraceptives, for example.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Many commenters have pointed out that all (more or less) water is recycled. No problem there.
I think many readers are capitalizing on the wording of the headline: "it gushes from the toilets of Singapore instead of a bubbling spring". The connotation of that wording makes it seem as if the water is being bottled from the toilet bowl.
I seriously doubt that that's the bottling process, but correct me if I'm wrong.
Should I remind people that the water they drink is pumped from rivers, lakes, and wells where animals (submarine and above ground) piss in it all the time?
And let's not forget that certain waste byproduct is actually desirable to drink! I'd like to find a lake full of this stuff. Hmmmmmm..... --M
I asked "If this source is in a rural area then you most likely purchased the land from farmers, who sprayed God knows what chemicals, which have all leached into your water. Perhaps they even dumped some of their old tractors and their pinto in the reservior. Perhaps they bathed in it. Perhaps they have leaking septic systems, maybe they let their cows swim in it." They of course had no info on this other then to tell me that it is heavily purified.
The good bottled water is NYC tap water. What makes NYC's water so good is that it comes from Reserviors in Upstate NY. The water travels through 100 mile tunnels that are over a hundred years old. These tunels are caked with MUNG like you can't belive, and all that bacteria filters our water. (Anyone with a fish tank knows what I'm talking about, biological filtration.) The only downside of our water is that once it gets here it travels throughout the city before it gets to you, through really old rusty or lead pipes way, way below the street. Some of them are near impossible to get to when one breaks, and many are near impossible to update / replace.
It sure does taste good though unless you live in certain parts of Queens where the water from the tap looks like milk until it settles. Yum.
I boycott signatures
Unless you are creating H2O molecules from scratch, the water we have now has been recycled by the largest recycling plant we know.. the earth..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Check this story out. Dasani Water comes from city tap water. City tap water is purified sewage water.
And if a person is so intent on getting "better" water, it would likely be more cost effective to refill your own bottles with filtered home water (slap a filter on the faucet or buy one of those filtering pitchers), or subscribe to one of those water delivery services.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
People are so paranoid now that they pay hundreds of pounds a year to drink "purified water" yet won't touch tap water which is the same.... There was a documentry on it here a couple of weeks back. As soon as they put a flashy logo on the tap-water bottles the guy sold out (Series was, "should I worry about").
People will drink anything they see as "cool". Call the water "Purified" or "cleaned" water and people will drink it like any other bottled water.
I like muppets.
I'll be wintering over at Dome C in 2005 (in the center of Antarctica). We'll be taking with us a prototype recycling system designed by the European Space Agency, able to recyle grey waters (also black 'waters' in 2006, but it will be after my time). So, yes, we'll be drinking and showering with past shower and dishwasher water... I won't go into details but the system has 4 successive filtering systems, and the water is so pure in the end that we have to add minerals to it. The funny thing is that the only thing that passes through unfiltered is alcohol; so since the water is recycled at only 75% (100% in 2006), it means that the alcohol content of the water will increase over time. Yum, I'm looking forward to the showers after a few months of pissing beer !!!
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I have lived in Ohio all my life and never have liked the water here. Out-of-staters notice it smells like chlorine. I can only imagine water from a toilet being an improvement.
Why do you have to drink it?
How about using it to water lawns, wash cars, put out fires, etc, etc.
Perhaps down the line you may need to, but in the mean time use it for other tasks and keep the "fresh" water for drinking.
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
Seldon Technologies is a small nanotech research company that has been working on making purification filters.
Not sure what you do with all the stuff that it catches in the filter, but it's interesting stuff. I don't know if they're gone to production yet, but I believe that they've been working with the USAF.
After all once we go the hydrogen based economy We can take all the clean newly created water and drink that right. So fresh water for all. Never mind the incredible amount of power we need to get the hydrogen.
In my experience (at least from Olympic National Park in Washington), water from glaciers is not very clear because of the minerals trapped in the ice. It is one of the ways to tell if a creek in the park is spring-fed (clear water) or glacier-fed (cloudy). In fact, the park service warns against using mechanical water filters with glacier-fed streams as the minerals will clog up the mechanism in short order.
The water you drink and use every day has been pissed out over and over again since the days of the dinosaurs and before. So get over it already.
Well, the real problem is not the animal wastes from lakes, wells, etc. The amount is minimal and easily broken down. The human waste can be filtered. What is the real problem with this, is that we are slowly building up toxic chemicals in the water. While a number are easily pulled out, there are many that will not be. Until we learn to handle our toxic waste (most from manufactuering processes) in a responsible fashion, I think that we will see biological issues start to show up in our populations. Think DDT and how long that took to be realized
In fact, I have been wondering how fullerenes will break down in nature. They will shed, and it will be interesting to see what kind of damages that cause long term
OTH, glad to see some amount of decent cleaning.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The spice must flow.
Or it could be short for Not Even Water? now we just need Fabio to go and film a commercial. "I can't belive it's not even water!" And then get a close-up of his new yellow smile.
Since we've treated the Great Lakes as sewers for a hundred years, Chicagoans are essentially doing the same thing. The water treatment plant here is considered one of the best in the world since its completion in the 1970's.
I would imaging that having a water distiller (there are interesting versions requiring little energy) in the home will be increasingly demanded in the future. pumping drinking water thorugh pipes is a bit much.
Water recycling to this extent is only useful in areas with water systems. ZeeWeed, and all other municipal systems such as this, are just too expensive for people in poor rural areas, such as much of India, China, and major parts of the African continent.
A much more practical solution for poor rural areas with abundant dirty water is household filtration and chlorination. This can be done with low-tech methods. The only middling tech item is a small bottle of sodium hypochlorite (bleach) that is used on a household basis. Since the bottle costs under US$0.40, and is lasts for several (six to ten) weeks depending on the household size, this truly is an affordable solution.
Science News ran the details some time back.I see billboards in my area for recycled water. (Outhouse Springs?)
Anyway, their tag line is "We're number two!!"
Humerous, but I don't know if I would drink it. I don't mind drinking recycled water, but the name just turns me off.
it gushes from the toilets of Singapore instead of a bubbling spring
Did anyone else think this was about Coke trying to market "Dasani II?"
Out in the Rural areas of USA (where sewers don't run) we have these things called Aerobic septic systems. Basically they take the waste water from homes, bubble air through it, chlorinate it (using some sort of a biosanitizer tablet chemical), and then store it in a tank until there's enough to spray off through a series of sprinkler heads.
My family cut the sprinkler heads off and uses it to water our flower beds and landscaping... but supposedly the water that comes out of it is clean enough to drink. We haven't had anyone brave enough to try it, though.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3545684.stm BBC Story: Prozac 'found in drinking water' This is completely weird with all of the other 1984 and brave new world stuff going on right now.
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The title escapes me but there was an SF story published circa 1956 about a group of astronauts whose drinking water is purified from their wastes, and get into trouble (perish, IIRC) because psychologically they cannot accept the idea and start believing that the water tastes foul...
I remember another about astronauts who, under conditions of weightlessness, start gibbering "I'm falling! I'm falling" and go mad...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
No, I would not drink this water. For the record, I never drink tap water although it is generally of good quality in my place and I only buy natural mineral water from local springs as well as water imported from France (Vichy springs rules!).
In theory there would be no problem to drink recycled purified water. H2O is just H2O and the "natural water" we drink has already been polluted, but we drink it anyway.
So my problem with recycled water isn't that I don't trust the science of water purification.
My problem is that I don't trust the humans who perform the purification, be it corporate managers or government officials.
Humans are motivated by profit. They wouldn't care if their recycled water is really purified or not, as long as the consumers believe it is clean and safe to drink.
I am afraid in the future very poor Africans will have no water at all, low-to-middle-class Latinos and Asians will drink recycled "purified" water, middle-to-high-class Westerners will drink really purified water and only the very rich Westerners will enjoy true natural water.
And what can be done about it? Nothing, until the humans adopt an "open source" solution to the water problem (or should I say "open springs"?) i.e. they should have an altruistic approach to production, purifying water for the common good ("public domain purified water for free!"), and not profit-driven.
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Now the people in Singapore can get Prozac in their water just like us Brits!
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
as i reacall, singapore has some serious issues with water. Fro those who dont know it is a small chinese enclave off of malaysia. It is also 100% urban and doesnt have any easy way of getting something we take for granted; drinking water. Singapore over the years has done a lot of experiments with rain water collection and water treatment to get water. No surprise they would be advancing that technology.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
How s this any different than any other water sytem.
All water is recycled
Simplest system is what I have, well water with a septic system. Water is pumped up from underground, I use it, then it flows into a septic system, which leaches back into the ground water, filtered by soil and rock. Cycle complete.
Everything in all of these articles have been done many times before all over the world. At best they took 3 old technologies and put them in the same place. Aain, something I'm sure has been done before.
In fact, this sounds about exactly the same as the public water supply used to supplement people private water supplies in the Bahama during dry spells. I can't find any difference whatsoever in this BS NEWater system, and any other modern water treatment plant.
It's the equivalent of someone claiming they have a new pneumatically filled rubber system of rotary rolling transportation.
It's been done folks.
Reminds me of when Segway (Faggy Scooter TM) made a big deal about Helical gears and how it lowered noise, and reduced wear. Yeah, so? Car manufacturers have been doing that for over a century.
Complete BS in this article. It's just some guy trying to get venture capital.
Closer to home. If you think NYC has the best drinking water there is, I advise goind upstate during the summer to go tubing at Phoenica, NY. There you will make the observation that tubers drink a lot of beer as evidenced by a minumum of two six packs lashed to the tube, the water is cold (with the subsequent effect on the kidneys), and nobody has ever been seen to stop and run into the woods. Oh, and did I mention the creek connects one NYC reservior to another?
Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.
---terry pratchett
In Columbus the city well field sits near the Scioto river downstream from the the sewage treatment plant outflow. I don't have the numbers in front of me now, but the city gets a large percentage of it's water from these wells, which draw a large percentage of their water from the river, which gets a large percentage of it's dischage from the sewage outflow. In the end reckoning most people in Columbus, are drinking what went down their own drains.
I'm sure there are similar situations all around the world.
No need for major concern though...thanks to strict EPA standards, sewage outflows are some of the cleanest water on the planet. There are malfunctions of course, which is why you hear about boil water orders from time to time.
You should be more concerned about your water quality if you have a private well and a septic system...that is where the real problems with bacterial contamination are. You just don't hear about them because the don't affect 1,000's of people at once.
IAAHydrogeologist
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
People drink from the Ganges everyday (and I challenge anyone to find a more festering river of cess anywhere). If the only clean water you could get was recycled, would you really care where it came from?
I live in Australia, and we have water quality in our sewers that beats the drinking water in many parts of the world. All that water ends up either out at sea, or flooding paddocks after secondary treatment. We currently have water restrictions here. I think that we would have less of a problem if we stopped throwing away perfectly good water. It's just stupid not to recycle it.
Giventhe degree this nonsense is accepted by the mainstream, it's no surprise that these recycling systems are controversial.
Using potable water to flush a toilet is just dumb. There's a story about a woman who brought an African to (England?) for some political reason. She was mortified when she discovered that he had crapped in the sink. He of course was embarassed. The reason was he had never seen a toilet and could not imagine that someone would defile perfectly good water and the sink was his best guess as to what these first world people did with their waste.
Eventually, they will learn that something is getting through the filter and harming a couple of people.
Between now and eventually, thousands or millions of people will be made more healthy by this good water supply.
When the contaminent is identified, all that will be forgotten.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
The man that can turn the sludge in the hudson river to purify water.
Remeber its not only the "3rd world country" that have dirty water spots.
Does anyone else think it's ironic that there is such a water shortage, while over 70% of the world is composed of water? I'm aware that desalination is expensive but I think that is the method that needs to be persued.
As a Singaporean i feel compelled to explain why i feel NEWater is important to us.
To understand why the development of NEWater is necessitated you need to know some background about us.
We(Singapore) are tiny(640km Square) and have no natural resources, our water supply is mianly from Malaysia(northen neighbours) and our reservoirs and some from Indonesia(Southern neighbours).
The bulk of water supply agreeements with Malaysia were made just before and after UK left Singapore (no longer colonised).
However in recent history, Politicians in Malaysia (namely Mahathir) have used Singapore as a whipping boy in their domestic elections. They have many a times delared their intent to cut off our water supply(which will lead to war) if we do not "do" as they wish(numerous interference in our domestic issue).
That of course is impossible as we are a sovereign nation in our own right.
This is because of baggage from the past as Singapore was once part of Malaysia before the Brits colonised us. And Malaysia and Singapore were part Malaysian federation for 2 years after the Brits left (We left because we wanted a society built on meritoracy, not based on racial preferences which to this day Malaysia still has - affirmative action for Malays, which forms the MAJORITY of the population in Malaysia, meaning minorities(Chinese, Indians) are discriminated against!!!!).
So somehow, the older generation of leaders there are resentful of the fact that we have separated and have done very well without them for the past 38years.
Hence the need to develop altenative sources of DRINKING water. For our SURVIVAL, Should they go against international law and revoke the water supply contracts.
...which could help 20% of the world's population that doesn't have easy access to clean water.
Could, if only they could afford it.
evian water is from the new jersey water treatment center. They ship it overseas so they can say "Bottled in the swiss alps".
Stupid eh?
...Zee weed filters bong water!
Well, of course accidents do happen, but they would be testing the output to detect this before the product went out the door..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Many links on Google
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
As a Singaporean i feel compelled to explain why i feel NEWater is important to us.
To understand why the development of NEWater is necessitated you need to know some background about us.
We(Singapore) are tiny(640km Square) and have no natural resources, our water supply is mianly from Malaysia(northen neighbours) and our reservoirs and some from Indonesia(Southern neighbours).
The bulk of water supply agreeements with Malaysia were made just before and after UK left Singapore (no longer colonised).
However in recent history, Politicians in Malaysia (namely Mahathir) have used Singapore as a whipping boy in their domestic elections to distract voters from domestic issues. They have many a times delared their intent to cut off our water supply(which will lead to war) if we do not "do" as they wish(numerous interference in our domestic issue).
That of course is impossible as we are a sovereign nation in our own right.
This is because of baggage from the past as Singapore was once part of Malaysia before the Brits colonised us. And Malaysia and Singapore were part Malaysian federation for 2 years after the Brits left (We left because we wanted a society built on meritoracy, not based on racial preferences which to this day Malaysia still has - affirmative action for Malays, which forms the MAJORITY of the population in Malaysia, meaning minorities(Chinese, Indians) are discriminated against!!!!).
So somehow, the older generation of leaders there are resentful of the fact that we have separated and have done very well without them for the past 38years.
Hence the need to develop altenative sources of DRINKING water. For our SURVIVAL, Should they go against international law and revoke the water supply contracts.
Link to article about Virginia's water recycling. Alot of info there too.
My first concern is the removal of virus. FRTFA is says zeewee has a pore size of 0.02 m. Virus have a size of roughly 10 to 50 nm so it sounds like that will not be a problem.
Next what about heavy metals, PCB's and dioxons. No mention about that...
The interesting thing about Singapore is that most of the country's water comes across a bridge from Malaysia. They are in an interesting Military / Strategic dilemma where their dependence on another country for fresh water is a severe national security issue. To be able to recycle waste water and use it for drinking is a huge deal that could lead to aqua independence from Malaysia. If only the US could make gasoline out of CO2!
--------- I have no signature
It's still likely that at one point the hydrogen you are going to burn was part of a water molecule in a brontasuaraus colon.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
All water is recycled anyway, whether that is by man or by nature.
You think nothing urinates in rivers that cities draw their water from?
If the "Yuk" factor bothers them, maybe they should get thirsty enough for them to forget about it.
Reminds me of the shock factor some people have when they are faced with the fact that the meat they are eating was once a living animal.
I believe I read somewhere that distillers don't really do the trick, because many of the volatiles that you really need to get rid of have roughly the same or lower boiling point than water, which means you aren't really filtering them out by distilling.
Anyone else know the real story on this?
its no one's water. It's God's water!
_+_+__+_+_+_+_+_+_+++
when i moo u moo - just like that
So how far away are we from those cool suits from Dune that recycle every last drop of water?
Chaos is Divine *
..used that excuse to justify being an alcoholic.
Works for me *hic*
Mmm, Newater and Kopi Luwak.
http://www.ravensbrew.com/NewFiles/kopiluwak.html
How far are we away from actually having Stillsuits? At least then we would be drinking out own wastes!
"STILLSUIT: body-enclosed garment invented on Arrakis. Its fabric is a micro-sandwich performing functions of heat dissipation and filter for bodily wastes. Reclaiming moisture is made available by tube from catchpockets."
Gimme a break! Glacier water isn't clear. Anyone who's actually seen runoff from a glacier knows that the water yielded presents with a cloudy appearance (Turbidity, for all of us Geology enthusiasts). It's actually a very interesting characteristic, as is any natural Earth process...
One of the reasons why Singapore even has to consider this is, is because they actually pay for the river water that comes through Malaysia. The problem is Malaysia wants more money, which is kinda wierd, considering the water is just going to flow to the ocean anyways... If you ever been there, Its quite amazing how much of the rain water they try to catch and hold, there only issue is they got little land so their water cachment area is small.
I mean, aren't they actively purporting that water keep memory and stuff as to "proove" their non-scientific theory ? Well next time one try to convince me, I will just let speak of what hapenned with the water he drinks ;).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It's really EWWWWWWWWater. The "N" got on there by mistake. :)
-Jonathan
An H2O molecule is an H2O molecule, is an H2O molecule. If the water is truly purified (A chemical/spectral/whatever analysis can find that out) it really doesn't matter. Should I remind people that the water they drink is pumped from rivers, lakes, and wells where animals (submarine and above ground) piss in it all the time? With a well, nature filters it out using the soil. Other methods require us to perform filtering to clean the water and remove any pollutants we added.
Free Desk
The Salon article has a tangential mention and link to an article about Orthodox Jews filtering NYC water because, while being "some of the purest municipal water in the world," it is contaminated with copepods, which are tiny crustaceans, and thus not kosher. What shocked me about this is that copepods are very large when it comes to filtration...for .2mm up to 10mm, with most around a milimeter according to this and some species are human parasites! (though almost certainly not the species found in NYC tap water, I'm presuming). And yet the article on NYC claims the NYC Department of Environmental Protection claims they are "impossible to do away."
Now, what surprises me is that a contaminant this large is a problem to do away with. What does that say about the ability of NYC water treatment to filter out far tinier contaminants like bacteria and protists? Are the copepods infiltritating the system post-treatment? Clearly, if NYC has some of the purest municipal water in the world, there's something missing from the story here. I'm sure there's some hydrologist or inverterbrate zoologist reading Slashdot that could shed more light on what's going on,
I'm not even going to go into closed system water recycling... :-)
I will....
If given a choice of water that just passed through some filter to remove most of the gross chunks and bacteria and water that was distilled by nature (rainwater), I would take the water that has a better chance of having been seperated from trace metals such as zinc, mecury, lead, arsnic, and other contaminates such as bacteria and viruses. Let the vapor go aloft and be exposed to the sun's UV rays for a while.
In some areas of the world, the air is so bad, that filtered waste water may be the cleaner choice, but in areas near an ocean with the predomimate breeze from the ocean, rain water gets my vote. This water is usualy collected at higher elevations to take advantage of gravity feed and puts the collection source above most of the populations drain systems.
As examples of this look up where Portand Oregon gets it's water. Only recently are they overgrowing the Bull Run watershed and are considering using more well water or river water.
The US Navy didn't want to connect to the Portaland City water supply when they visited. They thought there was a problem with the water because it doesn't have enough chlorene in the water. The assumption was made the system wasn't working properly.
Little Chlorene in the water indicates either the purification system isn't doing it's job properly, or very little is needed to purify the water.
From a quick Google search on Bull Run Watershed pulls up this quick tidbit.
The Bull Run watershed is the primary source of water for Portland, Oregon. It is located in the Mount Hood National Forest, separated from the mountain itself by a ridge. The watershed is about 102 square miles in area, and typically receives 80-170 inches of rainfall per year. It includes reservoirs, which store water for use during the city's dry summer months.
The watershed is reserved solely for producing drinking water. The quality of its water is so high that the city does not treat or filter the water.
I would drink recycled water, but if possible, I prefer mother nature to do the recycling. Too bad most of the world does not have a pure source of drinking water.
I have traveled to other parts of the world. Most places have awful tasting water.
The truth shall set you free!
DISCLAIMER: The webmaster of Zenon Environmental is a good buddy of mine. He now owes me beer. Unrecycled, for preference, though you never can tell with Canadian beer ...
I'm a Malaysian, I dont like water issue flame war.
I admit that the price singapore got to pay to Malaysia is very low, because it was signed a long time ago. It's time to negotiate better price.
not too low, not too high.
Forget politics, for me, Malaysia should continue supplying water to singapore for humanitary reason.
I hope both party not take any advantage such as setting pricing too high or too low.
Malaysian X-PM is quite anti Singapore, but the currrent one is not.
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
Come on, rain/river/spring water is just recycled water (and a lot of times) by Nature. Just the same here.
Apparently, this water goes through Reverse Osmosis, then micro-particle filtering, then UV exposure to ensure that it's completely clean and safe. I don't think it's content is much of a problem.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
NewWater has been around for many years now in Singapore. Why is this being posted now? Just a few YEARS too late!
Wouldn't that the "Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal"?
Damn right, and I proudly drink tap water. Why? Because my tax money already goes toward making it drinkable. Keep your bottled water, I'll stick with the stuff that's 1/1000th the price.
Learn something new.
There's a similar product for sale in the US (apparently just the Charleston area for now) called Outhouse Springs.
Of course, if you don't sterilize the bottles before refilling them, you end up with a whole lot of bacteria building up.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
"Water? Fish copulate in that stuff!"
Sustainability and energy independence essay
I see little difference between recently-recycled and distantly-recycled water.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I thought water treatment was standard practice in many places. It is in the US. Even where water isn't necessarily scarce. Really, I thought all "city water" came from a treatment facilities. That is where they add the chlorine and flouride and stuff.
Perhaps this new treatment method makes better water than most facilities, but is it really that unusual to be drinking water that was once flushed down the toilet?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Ummm.. I think I went too far with that one.
Makes me wonder whether the use of hydrogen gas for energy will lead to people getting newly-synthesized water (probably only as a luxury item, though). You can be sure that there's nothing but H2O in your water, because it was H2 and O2 until it was bottled.
Oct. 22, 2004 | The promotional bottle for Singapore's NEWater looks like any other bottled water, right down to its snappy name and bright label. And it tastes the same as other premium bottled-water brands -- maybe even better, if you prefer the metallic edge of Evian to the airy sweetness of Poland Springs. But while NEWater is transparent, its story is not, and it's frankly not terribly appetizing.
NEWater is the product of Singapore's new water-treatment system, and it is wastewater that has been purified through advanced synthetic membranes called ZeeWeed. That's right: The crystal-clear NEWater that gushes through the country's faucets isn't gurgling from a mountain spring. Most recently, it was flushed from a toilet.
The water is first treated in a traditional water plant before going through a three-stage purification that uses high-quality ZeeWeed membranes, which filter out even the most microscopic bacteria. By the time it's processed, NEWater meets all the drinking-water standards specified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization.
Don't panic. There is no plan to bring NEWater -- or anything like it -- to the United States anytime soon. "It's unacceptable to [U.S.] consumers to drink their own waste stream," acknowledges Ashok Gadgil, an Indian-born environmental physicist who works at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (though he quickly points out that astronauts use the technology in long-term outer-space trips).
The great promise is that this and other new technologies can, in some way, help solve an increasingly dire global water crisis. Nearly 20 percent of the world (1.2 billion people) does not have easy access to clean water -- 400 children die every hour from water-borne causes, according to Gadgil. And even in developed countries like the United States, fear of tainted water is on the rise -- and not just the non-kosher copepods that sneaked through New York's filtration system this summer, worrying Orthodox Jews.
In the United States, sand filtration systems have traditionally been used to remove particles and sediment from our surface water, which is then treated with chemicals like chlorine. But some strains of bacteria, including Cryptosporidium, have started to develop immunity to chlorine. In 1993, the microscopic "crypto" parasites spread through the municipal water systems of southeastern Wisconsin, causing an outbreak of a flulike disease that affected more than 400,000 people and killed approximately 100. While the outbreak has been linked to the inadequate treatment of drinking water taken from Lake Michigan, no specific source of the Cryptosporidium was ever identified. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that in the past 20 years, crypto has become recognized as one of the most common causes of waterborne disease within humans in the United States.
While the CDC assures us that the American drinking-water supply is normally safe, and that it has been taking precautions to handle outbreaks like the one in Wisconsin, it issues a reminder on its Web site that disease that spreads through water is still a very real problem. Crypto may be found in drinking water and recreational water in every region of the United States and throughout the world.
Membrane technology may also help the United States protect itself from terrorist attacks on the nation's water supply. Some membranes could act as a reliable barrier to contaminants such as sarin and anthrax. However, membranes can screen only water that goes into the treatment plant. Once it leaves the plant on its way to individual homes, water again becomes vulnerable, which is why government researchers stress that a viable water-security strategy must consist of two parts: treatment and monitoring.
ZeeWeed -- the illustrious membrane that processes NEWater -- is just one of the successful new technologies used to purify water of bacteria. But it's so captivating a product that it is developing a cultlike devotion amo
Of course I would drink it. It's water. On the other hand I would never pay a dollar for a bottle of it, just like I would not pay a dollar for any a bottle of any water. Cut the sensationalism.
Oh, come on. 640km ought to be enough for everyone.
the water drank by astro/cosmonauts in the ISS is nothing more than purified humidity/urine/sweat/etc. If I remember correctly, the Mir space station was the first to make use of this sort of process.
-Cnik
HELL NO!
Well, maybe you guys should have thought of that BEFORE you went and declairded your independance...
Sheeesh!
As a biopharm engineer, I don't trust anything more open than a 200-300 kDa filter (about 10-15 nm) to clear all viruses by size excplusion. [/shameless plug] ;-)
a lot of people are commenting that water coming out of our pipes (ugh..) were actually from water coming out from animal's "pipes" - so what's the big deal.
the thing is not only about where the water is coming from - the thing is that the water is bottled and branded - being sold for money.
guess that gives my nickname a whole new meaning...
my blog
1: London is not wet. It's on the east side and all the weather has already fallen on the western side of the country. I'm from Glasgow. That's wet, it's just north of Ireland and all that weather from the atlantic just drizzles in constantly.
2: The tap water in the UK is as good as it gets. It's as good, it's better than any bottled water you can buy. It gets sampled in thousands of locations and tested for *everything* on a weekly basis. Water quality is taken very very seriously indeed.
I worked at a water purification board during university, each day samplers went out to hundreds of locations across the region and took samples, this was done *every* day, covering the whole region they were responsible for, the samples were all tested the same day in state of the art labs for anything you care to mention, including hormones and drugs.
http://www.dwi.gov.uk/
So, basically you *are* full of shit, but it's your own shit, not somebody elses.
Deleted
I'm living in Singapore right now, and it's definately pronounced "NEW water".
That's quite an image you call up there.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
affirmative action for Malays, which forms the MAJORITY of the population in Malaysia, meaning minorities(Chinese, Indians) are discriminated against!!!!).
That's something I've never gotten - affirmative action. How is it that affirmative action for the minorities is acceptable (as is the case in the US and elsewhere, I'd imagine), but affirmative action for the majority is not?
Discrimination is discrimination. Period. It's not just.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Only accept a source you can trust - drink your own urine!
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
My stepdad is one of the water operators in my hometown. All of the equipment and procedures that are in place at the waste water treatment plant exists for the single purpose of cleaning up the water before they pipe it five miles out of town to the nearest river, which drains into the Mississippi.
Most of the water for communities that are not near major bodies of water (lakes, large rivers, etc) comes from deep aquifers via wells that are more than 1000 feet deep. This water hasn't been through a living being for at least a few hundred years, if not more. It can take quite a while for water to get down that far, and by the time it does its some of the cleanest water available anywhere.
Here is the NEWater website by the Public Utilities Board in Singapore. Mostly propagandaist, but check it out.
They still sell that stuff?
They tried it in the UK and had to withdraw it, because it emerged they were taking standard tapwater and adding chemicals to it (then charging 1000% of the cost price). The result failed several water safety tests, and had to be withdrawn from shelves and destroyed for public safety reasons.
Shortly after the debacle they announced they were discontinuing the product for 'business reasons'.
Drinking toilet water? That's nothing. Coca Cola bottled it and sold it us.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Before anyone yells "Source!!" here it is, btw.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3566233.stm
Wolverton Environmental Services, Inc. (WES, Inc.), founded in 1990 by B. C. "Bill" Wolverton, Ph.D., is a small environmental consulting firm providing consultant services in the field of phytoremediation. The Company advocates the use of plants and their root-associated microorganisms to biodegrade and treat indoor air and water pollution. http://www.ssc.nasa.gov/environmental/docforms/wat er_research/water_research.html
http://www.ssc.nasa.gov/~ssctrs/abstracts/cit.html
http://www.wolvertonenvironmental.com/book1.htm
From what I gather, the astronauts on IIS have been doing that for a while already as it is.
IIS? I hear that one already crashed.
If this water was really 'purified', why would they need to add alkaline chemicals to restore the pH? doesn't that imply that the water isn't purified and that there's an acidic compound still in it?
...and he said it tastes like shit. :-)
NEWater looks like any other glacier-clear bottled H20.
Ehm. Even seen meltwater from a glacier? It's blue-green and opaque from silt.
The drinking water treatment plant, located at Andijk, the Netherlands, serves approximately 500,000 people and treats approximately 25 million cubic metres of water per year. It is expected to be the largest installation involving UV technology in Europe and is the first of its kind to treat micropollutants. "Ultraviolet systems have, for some time, been proven as an effective barrier against a wide range of pathogens, including E.coli, Cryptosporidium and Giardia," said Marvin DeVries, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Trojan Technologies. "This project will optimize the design of a UV treatment system, using Advanced Oxidation, that will effectively treat a much wider range of contaminants, that, with extended exposure, may be harmful to human health." It is an alternative to Chlorine-desinfection, but better for the environment. They also claim better results than the chlorine-method. If you search the web for 'UV' and 'Andijk' you'll find more about it. I think this method can help any country in the world, even the UK and Australia.
Phase 1: Collect rancid toilet water
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!
Kryten: ... There's a whole case of that wine I brewed out of urine recyc, just lying there, practically untouched.
Lister: Call me pretentious if you like, but for me, a truly great wine should not leave you with a moustache that you can only remove with turps.
After I read that it gushed out my nose.
While I am not an engineer by training, my gf who is in her final year of Civil Engineering (with minor in Environmental Engrg) at the National University of Singapore has shared with me some interesting facts about NEWater. (Hey correct me here if I make gross mistakes)
:D
1) Singapore's NEWater does not come from the sewers. They are too squimish to run their reverse osmosis and whatever through the sai (shit) that passes through our sewerage system. Instead NEWater comes from drain water, which is a hell lot easier to clean than sewerage.
2) NEWater is pumped back into our reservoirs. Because NEWater lacks nutrients and minerals for human consumption, it is important that it is pumped back into the reservoirs so that it gets some of these properties back. Drinking NEWater over the long term (which is not what any of us do anyway) is not good for health.
3) NEWater is valued by industries. Manufacturing plants for instance do not need to process treated water and can instead use NEWater directly for things like cleaning PCBs and other electronic equipment since it is pure.
Overall NEWater is a good thing! I felt quite honoured to have been one of the guys staging the first public drinking of NEWater during the National Day Parade 2002... Altho all of us (even the Colonels from the Army) referred to it as sai-chui (Shit-Water)
I don't think it's content is much of a problem.
Unless it's contaminated with organic solvents or pesticides.
Some contaminates are not compatible with Reverse Osmosis. Check with a reputable dealer of Reverse Osmosis equipment. Find out if your source water is compatible. Reverse Osmosis is very good, but not perfect. I've been in places where Reverse Osmosis was used and had to monitor the incomming supply for possible shutdown due to contaminates.
The truth shall set you free!
Within just a few miles of the sea? The Lake Eyre basin. It obviously used to be part of the sea anyway, build a few canals and fill it back up with water, the surrounding areas will become far greener than they are at the moment.
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for those of you who have never been outside
- - - - -
people do this weird ritual where they grow grass and call it a lawn
- - - - -
we should ban all lawn work...it would make me very happy and converse water
According to the article, n1 selling bottled water in US is "Aquafina", which is also purified tap water... More interesting is that "Aquafina" is the also name of the government company that filters all sewage water in Belgium.
"The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum cleaner."
They also won the IG Noble prize for chemistry in recognition of their efforts.
Ahh, blanket statements
Of course you live where I do (Asmara, Eritrea) and you can't drink the regular water no mater how well you filter it, the distiller is the only way to go....arent you the people who made chewing gum illegal though?
Of course there are safety concerns. If some of the radio isotopes managed to get into the water as it went past, that would be bad. Fortunately, it's not hard to contain such things, and also, it's very easy to monitor the outgoing water to see if there is any leak of radioactive materials.
It just seems to make sense but I've never heard of such a system in use.
malaysia is not just full of racial bigotry, but religious bigotry as well.
one comes to expect this sort of thing from islamic states. its the rule rather than the exception.
Yeah, look at all these losers (USA, India) that declared independency from the UK... who has heard anything from them ever since? Me thinks other areas like.... ummm.... like.... Falkland Islands ... made the right choice!
We (the U.S. army) already currently employ R.O. technology to filter our water we employ units with the acronym of ropu to filter the water, push it through an ro unit, add chlorine and then store it in bladders or tanks. They can do an impressive 3000 gallons of low salt water an hour. RO units are also frequently installed underneath kitchen sinks. Quite comman practice... Although I've never peed in mine...
Suck stuff out of your body? You say it like its a bad thing. One of the reasons humans drink water is to help flush stuff out of the body.
You'd get far more minerals (esp biologically usable minerals) from food than you'd get from water that's fit for drinking.
So drinking really pure water is perfectly fine and likely to be even healthier than mineral water or other water (esp given the amounts of sodium present in some bottled waters).
The water comes from a well near the top of a hill above my house, flows into a settling tank where the worst of the sediment settles out, goes through a simple mesh filter to get the rest out, and down to the house. Real fresh Highland spring water. Very very cold, too.
I live in Mexico City, and much of the water comes from water-treatment plants.
:P ).
It's completely pure (problem is, water gets re-contaminated later due to poor transport, leaks, etc - so much for treatment, heh!
So, the question is: "Would you drink water that just came out of a water-treatment plant?"
Of course, what's the big deal? As long as it doesn't contain pathogen agents, it's OK. And that's what water treatment is about, isn't it?
The Zenon system may be suitable where the existing infrastructure and economy can support it, but in many places in the third world where clean water is hard to get, it is going to be too expensive to buy, install and maintain. Fortunately, there's another technolgy which has been proven successful in many of the poorest countries in the world. Biosand filters are cheap and simple, as well as effective - qualities that make them appropriate where Zenon may not be. For more details, see The Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology: http://www.cawst.org/technology/watertreatment/fil tration-biosand.php/
Israel has no water either and manages just fine... Desalination is a great technology.
I am concerned about the quality of those recycled water. Sure it should have removed most contagious subtances, but how about heavy metal, toxin and may be human hormones?
American man have mark drop sperm count due to contamination of drink water with female hormone; which originate from birth control pills and get into drinking water via recycling sewage.
Will that ZeeWeed system remove all these contaminants? I really doubt.
I wouldnt drink it, but my dog might
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It really taste's like crap !!
"Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it" Richard Feynman
So, how many decimeters is it from the water surface in your toilet bowl to the place where you hang your toothbrush?
NEWater = Neoterically Evacuated Water
It's one of those head trips people tend to think of in grade school:
"The water I drink has been on this planet for so long. Who knows where this drop of water right here has been before? Maybe it was even inside a dinosaur!"
It seems possible and maybe even likely that all the water you drink has been pissed out of SOMETHING in the billions of years this planet has existed. And it wasn't filtered by ZeeWeed then.
...at the corporate offices to be precise [she's an electrician, builds the panels that run the systems] - and once a week, she fills up a few 18 gallon water cooler bottles at work, and brings them home. This stuff is perfectly safe, or else we wouldn't let out 4 year old drink it. Last year, they refitted the Samsung plant with one of the larger systems, the one in Korea. Being able to shit in one side and have pure water come out the other is one of their selling points. These guys are world wide, and this is the future of water processing.
That's something I've never gotten - affirmative action. How is it that affirmative action for the minorities is acceptable (as is the case in the US and elsewhere, I'd imagine), but affirmative action for the majority is not?
Because it is trying to equal out the historic hurdles. For example, without AA, an incompetent C student that it white can get in to Yale over a better qualified black person. Yale uses alumni preference, and a vast majority of alumni are white. So Bush Jr. with crappy grades gets in while the more qualified black students are kept out.
The same happens in other parts of business. Most CEOs are white males. They are more likely, in the absense of all other factors, to hire more people like themselves. AA requires that they consider others, not just their brother's kids (also white).
Without AA, white males will receive preference over others. AA will force the consideration of those that aren't white males. It is not to require a less qualified minority be selected over a more qualified white male, though under-qualified white males are still chosen over more qualified minorities, like Bush Jr. for Yale. So even the current AA doesn't do enough to even out the playing field for the nepotistic white males in power.
Learn to love Alaska
While I understand why Singaporeans such as you feel you have the need to 'defend yourselves' from the 'big brother' Malaysia north of you, here is the other point of view.
:)
p.s. I am Malaysian, but I like Singaporeans, and I don't understand why the fuck we need to blow this all out of proportion. Kisses to the Singaporean girls
The funny thing is that, in the US at least, the discharge from most municipal sanitation systems is cleaner than the body of water it is discharging into.
San Diego went through this about 6 years ago. They have a sewage water reclaimation plant in Santee. San Diego and Santee wanted to put that water back into the municipal water stream. OH THE UPROAR!
So instead it is practically given away to area golf courses, parks and other open spaces, as well as to industrial (food manufacturing? don't know) users. In Santee, the hydrants and faucets that are supplied by this water are painted barney-purple.
Oh well. If only they got their water from a river, then maybe it would have been OK. After all, it doesn't stop places like the Tri-Cities, Washington,(you know, they're just downstream from Hanford on the Columbia River) from getting their water from potentially questionable places. Not only Hanford spewing/leaching into the Columbia, but think of all the chemical runoff from the Columbia Basin agriculture as well.
Here is one instance where the collective intelligence is very FITH. So much for "science-based" decision-making.
Isn't this how they do it in spaceships? Recycle water? Drink your own urine essentially?
Well, if it's good enough for the Astronauts, then it's good enough for you. (But not me, of course. That's disgusting!)
If astronauts drink from their own piss, how come this is different? Is there a bad soul lurkin in recyled water?
>does the name mean "NEW Water" or "Any Water"?
It's obviously pronounce "Ni!"
("Ahhhhh! Please stop!")
sigs, as if you care.
...Who Knows What's Biting Him" was the name of a great old book about roughing it.
In it, Richard Frisbie realizes / explains that freshwater fish have to process a lot of fluids to maintain their salt balance. This means freshwater fish piss a lot. An enormous amount compared to dessicated sorts like humans. A great portion of any freshwater pond/lake/stream you've assumed to be pristine is more like dilute fish pee.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"One of the reasons why Singapore even has to consider this is, is because they actually pay for the river water that comes through Malaysia. The problem is Malaysia wants more money, which is kinda wierd, considering the water is just going to flow to the ocean anyways"
Singapore is getting water from Malaysia at a very low price (as part of two contracts/agreements IIRC).
"The water is just going to flow to the ocean anyways" is a really silly reason to justify supplying it to another country at a very low price (or even another state for that matter).
Prices are usually based mainly on what the market can bear, not mainly on cost. Even if you want to get rid of stuff, if you can charge for it, you charge for it.
Even if there is excess water now, is no guarantee of there being excess water in the future. Johor (the Malaysian state where the water comes from) is a fairly populous state with quite a number of industries. Future contracts should take that into account if the Malaysian parties in future negotiations do their job properly.
If you divert water from a river the river becomes smaller - that is not something to take lightly either - divert enough and the impact could be significant.
Also, supplying the water from the river to Singapore involves pipes and other infrastructure, that's not super cheap either.
Finally even if the water is really just going to flow to the ocean and never ever anywhere else, it's fresh water. Blood has been spilled for much less.
So what you're saying is that this, ZeeWeed thing was created as part of a pissing contest?
They don't even do that... the female deposits her eggs and the male... nevermind.
...
from http://floridafisheries.com/Fishes/other.html
EASTERN MOSQUITO FISH (Gambusia holbrooki)
Common names - Mosquito fish (gambusia, pot belly).
Description - A diminutive silver-colored, live-bearing minnow that is common throughout Florida...
Spawning Habits - A live-bearer the male has a modified anal fin (gonopodium) used for inserting the sperm into the vent of the female, which gives live birth.
sounds like fucking to me
uric acid is not composed of H20.
NEWater could come from NE Where!
Pure H2O has a very dull taste. You won't have much luck marketing it I don't think. Then again, you never know. Some of the mineral water you can buy tastes noticeably worse than distilled water.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Some french industrialists are sitting around smoking cigarettes.
Frenchman: [takes drag] How stupid do I think ze Americans are? [takes drag] I bet we could sell zem water.
BTW, kudos to Singapore. They're dealing with the impending water crisis, which is more than I can say for my country (Florida in particular has their head up their patoot w/ regard to water usage). Yeah, I'd drink NEWater. It's cleaner than plain tap, or rainwater, so what's the big deal? No sense in getting emotional about where it's been, it's just water. It isn't going to relapse on a habit and spontaneously turn into pee. The "yuk" factor is just attention-seeking on the part of journalists. *Whap*! Bad journos!
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
A poem attributed to my high-school environmental science teacher 15 years ago or so:
Every time I think about it,
it always makes me sadder,
to know that every drop of rain,
has been through someone's bladder.
See you in the global water crisis! (Just add... er.... nameless liquids)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
For the geek crowd that says "Yuck! Pee water!" only smoking "ZeeWeed", etc.:
Just think: same situation, same filtration process, drinking (made from) pee water. The only difference is you are in a spaceship. Water and air must be recycled. Would you still drink it for the chance of being in a real spaceship, zooming through the galaxy?
I bet 99% of the geeks here (me included) would love to volunteer for that, pee water or no pee water.
Changes your perception, heh?
/* TAANSTAFL */
Shitwater
or
PissWater
The marketing practically writes itself!
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
...would you like one lump or two?
I thought Zenon Environmental was a Canadian company. They have a rather large building near my home.
Let's take a look here:
http://www.zenonenv.com/contact/contact.shtml
ZENON Environmental Inc.
Corporate Headquarters
3239 Dundas Street West
Oakville, Ontario L6M 4B2
Canada
Tel: 905-465-3030
Fax: 905-465-3050
ZeeWeed is just a one of their products.
...all water is recycled...
the water from a glacier has perfectly preserved caveman urine...
what's the difference?
-judging another only defines yourself
Dogs have been drinking toilet water for decades with no ill effects. Move along!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I grew up in Bahrain which is in the Middle East. Bahrain is a little island located east of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. The natural fresh water supply was is very limited. As far as I know I grew up on processes water. Most of the water (drinking, washing, and pretty much anything else) comes from either the sea or processed sewage water. I would drive by the processing plant every day almost... man it stinks. BUT, getting to the point! Processed water when done right is completely safe to drink or to use for anything else. I'm currently living in Texas and when I've told people about the processed sewage water I get weird stares. It's almost as if the thought that the water comes from sewage completely negates the fact that it's also perfectly safe to drink. Yes people, through the miracle of what we call science, we did figure out a way to make sewage water drinkable. It has been in popular use in areas where there are limited supplies of fresh water.
"Religion is the Opium of the masses." - Karl Marx
I'd drink this water in a heartbeat. If we don't reclaim water like this, the human race will be doomed.
The water prefered by 4 out of every 5 Kevin Costner's.
http://brandonbloom.name
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I would have to guess that you dont live in a major metro area, eg LA, NYC, DC, or some other random places like New Jersey. Have you ever tasted the tap water that comes out of these places? You can feel your life shortening by weeks at a time with each gulp of it. It is NASTY and just tastes like chemicals.
I dont live in a big city but hvae visited all places mentioned above. The tap water here in Oregon is pretty good, but I still throw it through a brita filter, because it does help get rid of the slight chemical taste.
Joseph?
Nobody is going to use a batch system. What you need is a distillation column.
Think of a non-corroding metal column usually several feet high. Different heights are maintained at different temperatures. You have an outlet at the boiling (which is also condensation) point of the material that you wish to remove and an outlet at the point in the column that is maintained at 100C.
The lower-temperature outlets will contain mixtures of water and whatever you want to filter; you can recycle this back to get some of the remaining water (you cant get all).
We do desalination too Right now NEWater figures to be slightly more cost effective. We have also flirted with obtaining water from moisture in the air (www.hyflux.com)
Yes I agree I believe the issue is blown out of proportion by politicians for their own gain. As for the points noted in your MFA, I could point to you another version in my MFA with exact opposite facts, so its all redundant posturing by us mere mortals. (Only LKY and Mahathir knows the real agenda) What i do know is that in your media, you only see what the government print so, your view may or may not be biased. BUT then again, seeing you on slashdot tells me you are not the average mindless person on the street =) As for the "defend" against big borther, well how would u feel if someone else from say a "rich and influential" landlord family tells u how to run your family? and stresses that if you don't comply they'll make life difficult for you? I know you guys may feel we are paranoid, but also put yourselves in our shoes and feel for a moment. Anyway with abdullah doing a great job cleaning up the MY political scene, things are lokking better each day =) Continued success to both sides of the causeway in future i say!! Anyway, cheers to girls on both sides of the causeway, I made a couple of really hot girl friends, while partying in KL :P~~
...used in those machines you find in front of the grocery store that sell drinking water for 25 cents a gallon. (Or 15 cents at ours, used to be 25.) Carbon filtration, reverse osmosis, UV, more carbon filtration. It tastes exactly like the stuff we used to get delivered at 10 times the cost -- $7.50 per 5 gallons vs. 75 cents per 5 gallons.
The technology is not new. What may be new is allowing people to get a system smaller than your average refrigerator.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
That said, this is pretty old news already; we've had NEWater out here in sg for, what, two years now..?
More than mere navel gazing.
Now consider this: even if M'sia cuts off all our water tomorrow, we WILL NOT go thirsty. You see, not only do we have desalination efforts going on, we also have this secret water project in Indonesia on which we can rely on in the near long-term.
The NEWater project has three primary goals:-
Industrial water supply (there are some chip factories in Kranji etc that need water)
Awesome diplomatic firepower when that water link treaty comes up for re-negotiation.
Making space for ourselves: sg is currently 4 mil people. By 2020, gov.sg wants that number to swell to 9 mil, either through emigration, or through "natural" growth (aka baby bonuses)
I mean, if even it is Bumiputra-first M'sia, I really don't think politicians there are reckless enough to break treaties. The Malay Muslim Nutcracker is less strong than you think. :-)
More than mere navel gazing.
Maybe so, but Aquafina (the water) is made by Pepsi.
Dasani is made by Coca-Cola.
These water brands are just small parts of a much larger corporate battle.
a very light shade of brown?
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
Yeah, because now Singapore's stuck being one of the richest, safest, and most-developed countries on the planet, poor suckers.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I live in Malaysia, and it's pretty clear to me that the main victims of this discrimination scheme are the Malays. It's a powerful demotivator. Unfortunately it's got a lot of demagogue resonance, so it's probably not going anywhere anytime soon. But as long as it lasts, you can expect the Malays to be underrepresented in business and overrepresented in unsatisfying token government jobs.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
The water's been recycled so many times it's beginning to taste like Dutch Lager!
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
Along with the windtraps and water caches... /herbert
I've already got decaliters saved up...
There's there nothing wrong with it! However the only case when I wouldnt drink it would be if the population started to spread a really scary virus. :)
I have been trying to tell my Singaporean friends for years, that they should jump on the latest water efficiency technology, and quit having to depend on Malaysia for their lives. That said...
I have never heard any Singaporean acknowledge that the old British-era water deal is still giving Singapore its water at *far* below normal international market prices. (I don't remember the exact numbers, unfortunately.) But even the parent poster acknowledges that Mahathir & Co still haven't raised the rates, despite campaign promises to do so.
On another of your points, don't think for a moment that it is "impossible" to simply give in to the demands of another, bigger "sovereign nation". It sucks, but it happens all the time--just like majority oppression of minorities. Nobody else really gives a care if you go back to your motherland.
Singapore's situation is far from unique. It is populated by immigrants who arrived in the past 300 years, just like say, the USA and Australia. Singapore broke away from its "motherland" during that time, just like (for comparison) the USA and Taiwan. Malaysia can theoretically foist "historical" arguments to say that they should own Singapore--just as legitimately as Britain can claim the USA, or China can claim Taiwan.
But none of that is relevant, because "history" as bludgeoned around in politics, is simply each group's exercise in hallucinatory self-aggrandizement. What matters is that these nations can defend themselves now, and make something of themselves for the future. For Singapore, that has meant producing probably the world's most efficient government, though they really haven't got democracy any better than their neighbors.
Taiwan for comparison has probably the closest thing to democracy in East Asia; and both countries have excellent levels of human resource development. The USA has done alright in the past too, sometimes outshining the rest of the British Empire, though I am not sure what they are up to now.
Slashdotters will be interested in a few statistics: Singapore has a population of 3.5 million, with an ethnic-Chinese minority that runs the country. Malaysia has 21 million, of which 7 million are ethnic Chinese. Indonesia has maybe 210 million, of which also 7 million are ethnic Chinese--who dominate the economy, and incur resentment thereby.
Indonesia claims (or claimed under Sukarno, after their independence) a historical mandate to own Malaysia, including of course Singapore, due to the commonality of Malayo-Polynesian ethnic groups dominating the region for about the last 1,500 years. Thus they threaten both of the other two, even though the reality is that the Malayo-Polynesian races are so disparate and fractured that Indonesia's existence is an unfortunate accident of the Dutch empire. (Java would be a great country on its own, if it didn't perpetually waste its energy hammering the rest of the country down.)
So it ends up that, even with their vastly different populations, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia have approximately equal militaries in terms of equipment--meaning equal numbers of tanks, planes, and ships.
That's the expediency of ethnopolitics for you.
But that would remove the Prozac from the water of the UK, I am not sure of that to be a good idea.
google: prozac uk drinking
Most of the water you drink has passed through someone else at some point or another, its not like sewage is ejected into outer space or something. The ZENON HQ in Oakville, Ontario has a set amount of water. It is recycled continuously using their own technology. It is tested at least 3 times a day (my sister worked there, it was a nuisance) and if at any point it fails, they bring in water on big trucks. This is rare, but not unheard of. So if you go there and have a drink out of the tap, it has certainly been through more than 7 people!
I was referring to the first post made. It was a full page ad for for Gay N****rs ( a vulgar term used for people of the African race) that are Angry or GNA. I never thought about it being removed, and then my exclamation was taken out of context.