Singapore

River Safari is the newest addition to Wildlife Reserves Singapore’s portfolio of award-winning parks, which includes the Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, and the Jurong Bird Park. It will be Asia’s first and only river-themed wildlife park that will feature eight fresh water rivers of the world – the Mississippi, Congo, Nile, Ganges, Murray, Mekong, Yangtze, and Amazon Rivers. Visitors to River Safari can look forward to an immersive experience in the world of rivers and learn more about freshwater habitats and animals.

Occupying 12 hectares, the River Safari will be home to over 300 animal species including endangered animals such as the Giant Pandas and the Mekong Giant Catfish; it will also house one of Asia’s largest collections of freshwater aquatic animals.

The River Safari aims to inspire visitors to appreciate, conserve, and protect fragile freshwater ecosystems.

Ardurra is providing detailed aquatic life support system design and engineering services and construction support for the project. With approximately 4,500 cubic meters of total exhibit water volume, River Safari will be home to one of Asia’s largest collection of freshwater aquatic animals and will feature over 300 animal species including endangered animals such as the Giant Pandas, the giant Giant Mekong Catfish, and the Giant River Otters.

Each major exhibit has its own dedicated treatment system to prevent cross-contamination between species. Additionally, the water treatment systems will help to ensure the animals are kept healthy as well as provide visitors with a pleasant experience. Water treatment systems include coarse screening and drum filters (manatee and otter exhibits), which reduce the overall filter backwash frequency for these exhibits by approximately 50 percent. Additional water treatment techniques include high-rate sand filtration, ozone, ultraviolet (UV), chlorination, bio-filtration, and aeration.

All of these methods work together to control turbidity, color, bacteria levels, nitrate, phosphates, dissolved oxygen, pH, and other water quality parameters. In addition to ensuring excellent water quality, Ardurra treats and recycles water used in the park as part of River Safari’s conservation efforts. Water will be reused multiple times in order to reduce the demand on the existing potable water and wastewater systems. Water use for makeup purposes following exhibit filter backwash cycles is the primary water consumer for River Safari. Therefore, freshwater makeup will be supplied through the existing potable water system with an option to use pre-treated water from the Lower Seletar Reservoir as a backup source in the future.

Additionally, a future backwash recovery system has been incorporated into the design. The backwash recovery system will be used to treat exhibit filter backwash for reuse in the exhibit, thus reducing the overall discharge associated with filter backwash by another 50 percent.