Remembering Lee Ek Tieng, Singapore’s pioneering ‘clean and green’ hero

SINGAPORE – From transforming the sewage-choked Singapore River into the characterful icon it is today, to spearheading the development of Newater, the late Mr Lee Ek Tieng was a pioneer civil servant instrumental in shaping the world-class public hygiene and sanitation system the Republic has today.

Mr Lee died at the age of 91 on April 6, leaving two sons and five grandchildren.

An engineer by training, he had an illustrious career in the civil and administrative service, including serving as permanent secretary of the Ministry of the Environment, head of the Public Utilities Board (PUB), and head of the Singapore Civil Service.

He retired as managing director of GIC at the age of 73 in 2007, and as chairman of the PUB board in 2001.

In a Facebook post on April 9, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said: “Mr Lee played a pivotal role in building a clean and green Singapore. In our early years of independence, he oversaw critical infrastructure projects, including an islandwide sewage system and the transformation of our waterways.”

Centralised sewerage

In 1972, Mr Lee led the newly-formed Ministry of the Environment in setting up a modern sanitation system, according to the Sewerage Master Plan he had proposed in the late 1960s soon after entering the civil service as a fresh graduate from the University of Malaya in 1958.

Pumping stations were built islandwide to channel sewage to a centralised plant at Alexandra Road, where the sewage would be treated to international standards before being discharged into the sea.

This put an end to the unhygienic practice of night soil collection by 1987, when the last night soil disposal station at Lorong Halus ceased operations.

By 1992, 136 pumping stations islandwide and a network of sewer lines spanning 2,340km was established.

All of Singapore had access to modern sanitation by 1997.

The sewerage network was established in tandem with key developments in Singapore, including the building of public housing estates and industrial parks, and the clean-up of the Singapore River.

Cremation and columbaria

The Singapore government identified all major cemeteries as land “considered available for development” in its 1965 Master Plan

With then-newly independent Singapore also land-starved, the seizure of land for national development was necessary.

As permanent secretary for the Ministry of the Environment, Mr Lee and his team then began the delicate and controversial task of progressively closing down some of the 213 cemeteries islandwide in 1973, according to the book Lee Ek Tieng: The Green General Of Lee Kuan Yew, published in 2025.

The land was redeveloped for housing, healthcare, and education facilities.

The government advocated cremation – not commonly practised then – as an alternative to burials, as it needed less land and was cheaper.

“Lee guided Singaporeans, especially the Chinese community, towards cremation for the greater good of Singapore. But he was also conscious of other communities in the country whose religions prohibited cremation – including Muslims, Jews, and Parsees,” the book noted.

Mr Lee and his team would still offer them a plot of land in Choa Chu Kang for burial, justifying that those were minority groups, and that their cemeteries would be smaller, and the number of graves, fewer.

Having the foresight that Mount Vernon crematorium, the only crematorium available then with just one service hall that held four cremations weekly, would not be able to meet the increasing volume and frequency of cremations, Mr Lee directed that 15 new columbarium blocks and two more cremation halls be erected in 1978.

Clean-up of the Singapore River

In 1970, Mr Lee was appointed as head of the newly-formed Anti-Pollution Unit under the Prime Minister’s Office, and tasked to tackle the issue of air pollution contributed by factories and poorly maintained vehicles.

In 1977, the unit turned its attention to water pollution. This meant none other than the laborious clean-up of once-heavily polluted Singapore River, which extended to the Kallang Basin. These two bodies of water alone made up about 30 per cent of Singapore’s land area then.

By the end of the 19th century, the Singapore River had become the centre of trade and commercial activities. With heavy commercial activity along the length of the river came rising pollution.

Leading up to the 1900s, businesses and street hawkers often dumped their waste into the river, which was also fouled by oil and debris from lighters transferring cargo to and from ships anchored out at sea. Lacking proper sewage facilities, squatters used the river, adding to the stench of the increasingly polluted waterway.

The rivers near Kallang Basin were similarly polluted, with shipyards, duck farms and pig farms adding to the problem.

Between 1977 and 1987, Mr Lee, as permanent secretary of the Ministry of Environment, led a $300 million multi-agency project to give the river system a facelift.

Faced with tens of thousands of squatters, farmers, street hawkers and others who treated the river as their personal toilet and dumping ground, Mr Lee and his team had to first offer them alternatives to direct them away from the premises. This included offering businesses monetary compensations, and families, alternative accommodation.

Then came the actual clean up, where about 80 discarded boats and tonnes of rubbish were removed from the water, and the riverbed, dredged to eliminate all contaminants.

Newater and the national taps

Most would be familiar with the “four national taps” of Singapore: water from local catchment areas, imported water, Newater and desalinated water.

Perhaps fewer may realise, however, Mr Lee had a huge part to play in the security and establishment of three of the four channels that bring us drinkable water.

Driven to establish a self-sustaining source of drinking water, Mr Lee proposed water reclamation and desalination as alternative sources in the Republic’s first Water Master Plan that he put together with engineer Tan Ghee Paw in 1972.

A first attempt was made two years later, with the construction of Singapore’s first experimental water reclamation plant in Jurong. It was, however, decommissioned a year later, as water treatment technologies then were too expensive and unreliable.

In 1998 – with the number of reservoirs secured and expanded, and ties between Singapore and Malaysia strengthened – Mr Lee revived the project, and sent two engineers from PUB to the United States to study the latest proven use of membrane technology in water reclamation for potable purposes.

Another two years later, a full-scale demonstration plant that could produce 10,000 cubic metres of reclaimed water was commissioned.

Dubbed Newater, this novel strategy to promoting water security now supplies up to 40 per cent of Singapore’s water needs and is targeted to satisfy up to 55 per cent of Singapore’s future water demand by 2060.

In a tributary Facebook post to Mr Lee on April 9, Minister for Sustainability and the Environment and Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations Grace Fu said: “He spearheaded the development of Newater to recycle water and supplement the population’s growing water needs. In fact, he was the person who coined its now-iconic name.”