What were some problems or challenges faced? What were the oppurtunity costs involved?

The original conflict at the first airport (Paya Lebar Airport), was the rising traffic, which caused congestion problems. So, Changi Airport was built to reduce congestion in the rising traffic. To prevent the conflict of heavy traffic at the new Changi Airport, the government decided to situate Changi Airport near the sea, so that expanding the airport via land reclamation would be easy. Changi Airport has been built on reclaimed land of the Changi sea.

1) The fact that Changi Airport was built on reclaimed land, caused most of the problems and challenges that had to be faced when the airport was built. 272,000,000 m³ of sand was required to fill a part of the sea and carry out land reclamation. Of course, reclaiming such a huge amount of land cost a lot of money, especially in the past, when Singapore was nothing more than a trading settlement. The land reclamation cost Singapore about $1.9 billion.

In January 2007, Indonesia banned sand exports, and stopped selling sand to Singapore, making the land reclamation project for Changi Airport much more difficult. Another contributing factor to this conflict was that the cost of import of one cubic metre of sand increased from US$16 to US$60, which was extremely difficult to carry out large-scale reclamation, especially for small islands like Singapore. This ridiculously high price just for sand caused small conflicts between Indonesia and Singapore, because of the lack of natural resources like sand. Singapore has scarce sand resources. So basically, there is shortage of sand to reclaim more land.

Solution: Instead of depending solely on Indonesia for sand, Singapore can buy sand from other third world countries which need the money, such as Saudi Arabia. It is also cheaper to buy sand from Saudi Arabia, a lower economically develooped country than other economically developed countries, like Europe or the US. Also, a solution that has already been carried out is when Singapore buys sand and stores it in our country (Tampines) in huge sand piles, just in case countries refuse to export any more sand to us.

2) Land reclamation might be affecting the habitats of marine life, and this is a negative aspect of land reclamation, especially since it a lot of marine animals are currently endangered.

Solution: Before reclaiming land from the sea, Singapore should rescue the marine life from the area we plan to reclaim, and place them in a habitat very similar to their original habitat. The habitat to place the rescued marine life in, could be another section of the sea where land reclamation is not about to take place, or even the zoo, where the marine life could be taken care of, well.

3) Singapore is surrounded by several other countries, which prevents it from reclaiming land beyond its boundaries. We need to preserve the international boundaries too. Land reclamation has also caused conflicts with Malaysia, who once accused Singapore of reclaiming land in jointly governed waters. Malaysia and Singapore both own the waters, which is why Malaysia claimed that it was unfair for Singapore to increase its land area. Malaysia also complained that their fishing waters are distrupted, and they cannot fish properly of freely anymore due to the land reclamation. This has roughened the once smooth relationship between Singapore and Malaysia, making it slightly harder for Singapore to carry out the project of land reclamation.

Solution: If Malaysia threatens Singapore to end the truce between us, Singapore could offer approximately 2% of the profit of our newly reclaimed airport to Malaysia. This way, Singapore would not be completely unfair to Malaysia, as we are sharing our profit with them. Also, Singapore never stopped Malaysia from reclaiming land from our jointly governed waters. It is a matter of choice whether other countries want to reclaim land from the shared sea or not.

4) Singapore is unable to reclaim land indefinitely, as we can only reclaim land up to 15m deep, as it is to costly to reclaim land beyond the depth of 15m. This is due to current technology, which makes it expensive for land to be reclaimed beyond the depth of 15m.

Solution: There is nothing much we can do about increasing the depth of land reclamation to beyond 15m deep, as this process might be either technologically impossible, or way too costly.

5) Singapore being a major sea port, requires sea space in order to mantain the accessibility to the sea ports. Space is needed for ships to enter and leave Singapore while carrying out the processes of trading. If too much land is reclaimed for Changi Airport, there will be a lack of sea space for the sea ports.

This map of Singapore shows that Changi Airport is right next to the sea, which is how land reclamation for the airport takes place easily.
-Angelii a.k.a Harry Potter :P

Feature: Land Reclamation: http://www.mpiweb.org/Archive?id=14530