Dear Friends,
Greeting from Waterways Watch Society.
For those celebrating the season, A Happy Chinese New Year!
Although Chinese New Year is around the corner, WWS still managed to conduct seven programmes. Beside the regular Kayak Waterway Clean-up for NVPC new citizens (35pax) and two sessions of Kayak Waterway Clean-up for 106 OBS students, we also conducted Kayak Waterway Clean-up for HDB (33pax), Property Guru (16pax) and MuleSoft (24pax). Other then that, PSA had a Foot Waterway Clean-up Programme, but the take-up rate was a bit low (9pax). That’s probably because of the coming CNY, thanks to the support from participants attended! CEO also gave two CLC talk to a total of 70 audients.
On the Saturday morning, 20 members joined the Jurong Lake Biodiversity Guided Tour by NPark, to enhance our knowledge about Jurong Lake Garden (see photos).
In total, 130.5kg of litter was collected during this week.
Over the weekend, a total of 35 members did four patrols on bike at three locations, two patrol at Kallang and one each at Jurong and Punggol. Out of these 35 members, six were new members doing orientation.
On Saturday morning, members sighted plastic bottle below the Merdeka Bridge on the Dragon Boat Beach side, left there since last week (see photo). Lots of rubbish were picked-up around Costa Ruh area (see photos). At the F1 pit area, River Hong Bao Festival fenced up the area, but rubbish was thrown on grass inside the fences, not cleared since last week (see photos). Duck Tour Launching area was also full of trash (see photos).
During afternoon patrol at Punggol Waterway, three cases of illegal fishing were engaged. One of them is a regular defiant fisherman at Punggol Waterway who has always been engaged by patrol members for a few months and he is using live bait. He always complies and leaves when being engaged but often comes back and continues fishing when members leave (a meaningless exercise frankly). Moreover, a Chinese couple was spotted smoking and discarding their cigarette butts on the ground beside the Fountain are next to the Waterway Point. However, they saw our members also and make their exit prior to our approach. Other than that, there were no sightings of wild animals and stray dogs and area under Punggol Rd Bridge was stained with pigeon dropping as usual.
On Sunday morning at Kallang, there was no boat patrol this week(no driver), thus members split into two bike teams and patrolled at different routes. Team 2 first picked up lots of litter from embankment near lamppost A3 104 and Duck Tour launching area which has been reported by Saturday (see photos). A dustbin with ashtray was placed in front of the walkway of The Pelican, smokers were spotted smoking around the dustbin, but not sure if the area allows smoking (see photo). However, there is no bin at the dedicated smoking zone at the side entrance of Shopper @ Marina Bay and ciggerrute butts and boxes were thrown on the ground (see photos). Other than that, a group of fishermen of three were fishing at the Flyer, after advised them to fish at authorised zone, they stop but didn’t leave. On the other hand, six new members followed Team 1 for orientation. They engaged 20 park users about anti-littering and engaged a fisherman fishing at the fishing zone but using bread as bait. There was a public event by the Singapore Canoe Federation at the Tanjung Rhu Suspension Bridge area. The areas were clean and event participants were orderly. Coming to the afternoon, Jurong Team proceeded to bike patrol. They collected trash along cycling route at the side of the lake.
