Bad News For People Who Shower For At Least Half An Hour Daily: Second Water Hike on 1 July

A wise old man once told me, be careful of what you wish for. Turns out, it’s pretty legit advice.

A shitty one, yes, but legit too.

If you’d been wondering if the water prices will increase again due to Mahathir’s insistence on the ridiculousness of 3 sens per gallon, and wishing that it won’t.

Well, you got your wish.

A second water price hike has come into effect but it’s not due to the 3 sens thingy. It’s something that was announced last year.

Waaaaaaaaaaaay in advanced.

Here’s a flashback in case you’ve forgotten all about it.

Budget 2018 might’ve been all about GST Hike (okay, fine, it wasn’t but that’s all people are concerned about) but Budget 2017? It was all about the water hike.

Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat announced during the budget last year that for the first time 17 years, the price of water will increase.

And it’ll increase by 30%. 15% on 1 Jul 2017, and 15% on 1 Jul 2018.

Which was yesterday, by the way.

According to the Finance Minister, the price of water has to be increased to reflect the latest cost of supply water to Singaporeans.

And here’s the most interesting thing

Just like your Singtel mobile plan, there are two tiers to different charges, and it’s tied to the amount of water you use.

Except, the higher tier won’t get you more discounts, you’ll just be charged more.

If your household uses less than 40 metre cubic of water every month, you’ll be charged $2.74 per cubic metre used.

If you use more than that? It’ll be $3.69.

By the way, that’s an increase of 35% between the two tiers, give or take.

This initiative is done in hopes to deter water wastage. In other words, words cannot work, right? Neh mind, I’ll hit you where it hurts the most. Your wallet.

Some Simple Math To Show The Power of 30-Minute Showers

So if you or any of your family members take a more than 30 minutes shower daily, that adds up to about 24.76 cubic metres of water used for showering.

0.825 (water used for shower tap) * 30 (number of days) = 24.75

For a single person.

(Disclaimer, calculation done based on average water consumption of a showerhead and assumes that you don’t shut off the shower tap at all throughout your shower.)

So where does the money go? 

That’s the one important question that every Singaporean will have. We don’t mind paying for more, but where does that extra cash go?

The money will go towards maintaining Singapore’s water infrastructure. Like NEWater.

The latest NEWater plant at Changi took about $170 million to build. Yes. M-I-L-L-I-O-N.

And to bring home to point how high the water consumption is in Singapore, the NEWater plant is only able to less than 10% of Singapore’s water consumption.

In fact, the entire NEWater system can only supply up to 40% of Singapore’s daily water needs

Singapore’s daily water consumption is 430 million gallons of water a day with households responsible for 45% of it.

Which is why there’s so much pattern regarding water.

I mean, think about it. Water is essentially the essence of life.

You can not eat food for a week (okay, fine, some can survive, some like my fat colleague, Vincent Tan, can’t) but go without water for a week? You’ll die.

And Singapore is facing some, admittedly difficult, obstacles when it comes to supplying water.

Just look at what’s happening recently. Malaysia is threatening our water supply again despite an existing agreement.

Which, some speculate, is for us to give up on asking for money on the scrapping of KL-Singapore High-Speed Rail project.

Plus unpredictable weather that leads to falling level at Linggiu Reservoir in Johor. And you know we have to think of how to be self-sufficient in our water supply. Fast.

So let’s be patriotic and just pay the extra cash. Or start to use less water. Either way, Singapore wins.

Now you know what Singaporeans are talking about today; do check back tomorrow for another piece of news of the day!