First look at Lorong Halus Wetland

On a Labour Day holiday, I was waiting throughout the day for the drizzling to stop, but to no avail. Therefore I decided to go ahead to cycle up Punggol to the new Lorong Halus Wetland in the drizzle.

I've heard quite a bit of this new wetlands from blogs and news articles. A bridge connects Lorong Halus with Punggol across the Serangoon Reservoir.

If you can recall, Lorong Halus used to be a landfill site. When it rains, water passes through the old waste that was buried and may contaminate the reservoir.

As such, the Lorong Halus Wetland was built to treat the leachate before it flows into the reservoir from the subsurface.

Part of the water treatment process includes bio-remediation or phytoremediation where certains species of plants are able to absorb toxic substances from the contaminated water. A such many of the cattails have been planted in neat rows and columns.

The cattails have been known to be able to reduce microbial load, heavy metals, and allow for desalination. Cattail remediation in wastewater lagoons is now being practiced in many parts of the world to treat urban runoff contamination.

Within the polishing pond, there are also other species of plants.

I also had a quick look at the vegetation lining beside Sungei Serangoon, which now is Serangoon Reservoir. There are quite a number of sea hibiscus trees.

I also came across some interesting critters and other plants:






I did not walk right to the end of the path that leads to the dam. Maybe next time!

Last but not least, I had a look at the visitor centre.

Where there is a huge map on the watershed of Singapore.

Below are some of the exhibition boards explain how the wetland works to remove toxic materials in a natural way before water flows into the reservoir.



For a detail explanation and understand of how the Wetland works, please visit Kwok Chen Ko's Water Quality Monitoring blog. He has given a great introduction and description in the post.

As I was cycling home from Lorong Halus, Ron messaged me saying that he spotted me on my bike. He was also visiting the place with his family and later told me he saw a family of eight otters!! Wow, how I wished I was there to witness that.

More photos of the trip here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/koksheng/archives/date-taken/2011/05/02/