In July 2017, Water. Desalination + reuse (Faversham House) reported that Keppel had shown details of the Marina East Desalination Plant in Singapore at its groundbreaking on 29 June 2017. The 137,000 m³/day plant was to sit largely underground on three hectares beneath a 20,000 m² park. It could take seawater or Marina Reservoir water, treated by flocculation with flotation, ultrafiltration, two-pass reverse osmosis and UV disinfection. Keppel Infrastructure, via subsidiary Marina East Water, was building it as a design-build-own-operate scheme with a 25-year PUB offtake deal, due by 2020.
The report showed Singapore fitting desalination plants into the urban landscape and using the switch between fresh water and seawater to make supply less dependent on the weather.