Some years back, we went to an island province called Palawan specifically in Coron islands. The biggest island is the civilation where the small hotels and inns are located. Our tour guide reserved rooms for us right in their house. In their backyard is the sea which we noticed that is being reclaimed. Our guide said that they had already filled in the reclaimed area with 50 trucks of rocks and soil but the water is still there. He estimated that they would need about 100 more truckloads of rock and dirt to have an additional 1,000 square meters from the sea. Think of that extra lot in value when an inn is erected.
China's been doing similar work on the Spratly Islands for some years now, working on atolls and reefs once claimed by your country. Their motives are a bit more militaristic.
Hong Kong is one of the kings of reclaimed land. If you look at maps of the place now compared to 100 years ago it's almost unrecognizable. The government's argument seems to be that it's the price of progress for a city state with limited space. Unfortunately, at the rate they are going at reclaiming along the waterfront it won't be long before people will be able to virtually walk across the same harbor that the place built its trading name on.
We were in Hongkong early this month and I had seen the place from the plane. Truly it is composed of islands that are connected by bridges and visible were the reclaimed portions. We took a ferry to Macau and we also saw the reclaiming that is going on. What they do is to draw the boundary using boulders that they pile and then once the preferred area is secured with breakwater all around, that's the time they would fill it in with soil. They work fast because 10 hectares of reclaimed land is only 5 months work.
