Land Reclamation

Another way to increase land supply is by land reclamation. As mentioned before, land is sorely needed in Singapore as it is a small country with a limited amount of space. Thus, the creation of new land is for the need of human activities.

What is land reclamation?, you may ask. Well, land reclamation means to treat an area to gain back land that was damaged or land that was covered by water. Here are the different stages and procedures needed for land reclamation:

• Stage 1 - Build wall to enclose area to be reclaimed.
• Stage 2 - Drain away sea water.
• Stage 3 - Enclosed area is filled with sand, soil, rocks or treated waste.
• Stage 4 - Filled area is stabilised by planting deep-rooted trees.

This is a good method as Singapore is surrounded by sea water and there is plenty of space to expand. However, this does not mean that it does not bring about its own disadvantages. For one thing, although there is plenty of space for Singapore to expand, there is still a limited amount of land that each country can reclaim. Land reclamation is also an extremely tedious and expensive process as buying and importing sand from overseas costs a lot of money.

Here is an article I found interesting, it is titled 'Singapore finds it hard to expand without sand' by Koh Gui Qing. Click on the link below to read it:

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=30328

Here are more detailed explanations as to what land reclamation really is. Land reclamation involves modifying wastelands or waterways to convert them into usable land, usually for the purpose of development. Reclaimed land can be quite expensive, since it is located close to the water in areas which are appealing to many settlers. People may be willing to pay a high price for reclaimed land, especially if they used to live and do business by the shoreline and the land reclamation has pushed their property inland. In some regions of the world, land reclamation happened so long ago that people are unaware that they are living and doing business on land which was created by artificial means.

Reasons for Land Reclamation

Large-scale reclamation has been undertaken in different parts of Singapore since the 1960s. This is necessary because of

• the small size of the country (total area being about 581.5 square kilometres prior to 1960).
• the rising demand for more land as population increases

More land has been made available for

• building more homes in private and public housing estates and recreational facilities for the growing population.
• expanding commercial and industrial activities and transport needs, the latest of which includes roads, expressways, the Mass Rapid Transit System, the port and airport facilities.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C006891/reclaimland.jpg

By 1990, the total land area of Singapore was 633 square kilometres. This was an increase of 51.5 square kilometres, which made up 8.9% of the total land area. With continuing land reclamation, land area in Singapore will increase by about another 100 square kilometres by the year 2030. There are, however, constraints as to how much more land the country can reclaim.Two limiting factors have to be considered.

• Land reclamation works in the past used to be carried out from depths of 5-10m. Today, reclamation works have to venture into deeper waters of around 15m and this will incur much higher costs.
• It is not so viable to pursue pushing reclamation further offshore because there is a competing need to maintain the sealanes and provide new and larger ports for the bigger ships to anchor in Singapore's limited sea space.

Here is an article I found interesting, titled 'Singapore says no need to consult Malaysia on land reclamation'. Click on the link below and read the article on that page:

http://www.singapore-window.org/sw02/020405af.htm

P.S: Here is an interesting fact about land reclamation in Singapore. Do you know that in the early years, the fill materials taken from the hills in Bedok, Siglap, Tampines and Jurong were used for filling the reclamation areas, which is why Singapore is virtually flat now. After they ran out of these local resources, the reclamation contractors started to import sand from the neighbouring countries.