\n<\/p>\n
In the early years, land reclamation was carried out with hill-cut materials, or soil excavated from hills, said Professor Chu Jian, President’s Chair in Civil Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).<\/p>\n
Tampines, for example, had hills excavated so their soil could be used for reclamation, he said.<\/p>\n
“For later years of land reclamation, we don’t have hills to cut anymore, so we start to import sand,” he said, pointing to Jurong Island, Chinese Garden and Changi East as areas reclaimed using imported sand.<\/p>\n
Because of the limited supply of fill material, Singapore has also turned to marine clay from sea wall construction and excavated material from MRT construction and buildings, he added.<\/p>\n
To reclaim land, a dike or sea wall is built along the boundary of the proposed land area before it is filled with material.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdeally, sand should be used because it’s easy to handle, and also sand is less compressible. If you use clay, it\u2019s very difficult to treat \u2026 the cost of improvements will also be higher,\u201d said Prof Chu.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut of course, the cost of sand is getting higher and higher, and also, it may not be easily available.\u201d<\/p>\n
The challenge of getting enough fill material for land reclamation is compounded by the need for more as Singapore goes deeper into the sea for reclamation, experts said.<\/p>\n
One hectare of sea about 10m deep needs about 100,000 cubic metres of fill material, whether sand, approved soil or approved dredged material, said Mr David Ng of the Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES).<\/p>\n
Most reclamation today is done for seabed depths of up to 20m, said Mr Ng, who is also co-founder and executive director of One Smart Engineering.<\/p>\n
Assuming an average seabed depth of 20m, the 800ha Long Island could need at least 160 million cubic metres of infill material by a rough estimate, or roughly the volume of 64,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, said Mr Ng.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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How has Singapore traditionally reclaimed land? \u00a0 In the early years, land reclamation was carried out with hill-cut materials, or soil excavated from hills, said…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--sUS3hpOO--\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2023\/09\/21\/bukom_aerial_shell.jpg?itok=0B2fMy_Y","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15,1339,2562,3607,7243,22],"class_list":["post-81747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-cna","tag-explains","tag-future","tag-land","tag-reclaim","tag-singapore","wpcat-2-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/81748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}