A COMPLETELY NEW PORT
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harbours are land-hungry; buoy-and-lighter operations require handling areas for cargo, and these tend to straggle along the shore - sometimes uneconomically. Container ports require blocks of land, where the back-up activities can, like the 'muscle' of the terminals, be concentrated.
Hong Kong's paucity of land is proverbial. Six million people live in an area one-third the size of Rhode Island in New England, much of it so hilly or mountainous as to preclude building. From the foundation of the territory up till today the main solution to the problem has been reclamation. Indeed, Hong Kong has become known as 'the place where they slice the tops off hills and dump them in the sea and build on them.' The process continues and, so far as one can visualise, will never end.
For the new port, a total of 1 200 hectares will have to be formed by the year 2006, an increase of 1.2 per cent on the present territorial total. About 250 million tonnes of earth, rock and sea-bed sand must be moved. Even more reclamation will be necessary when the present PADS projects are completed in 2011.
To sea-bed sand 'marine-sourced fill,' as the technical jargon has it - a tale of resourcefulness in research is attached. After some disastrous landslips following rain- storms in the early and mid-1970s, Hong Kong recruited a cadre of geotechnical en- gineers, later reinforced by geologists, to ensure that such catastrophes would not recur. In due course these specialists, getting together off-duty to talk shop, formed the marine studies group of the Geological Society of Hong Kong.
It was one of the smallest, and often the least formal, of learned groups. It was also one of the most productive. The contributors to its proceedings included consultant engineers working for the container-terminal companies.
Research centred on the marine implications of a territory-wide geological survey, which seemed to suggest the existence of sizeable deposits of sand and gravel on the sea-bed in various locations. By 1988, test bores and sampling had confirmed the presence of a rich new material resource, capable of compaction for land-fill purposes.
The implications were far-reaching, technically and economically. To form new land in the sea, Hong Kong would no longer have to resort to 'cutting the tops off hills' to anything like the extent this was necessary previously; the bulk of the fill would come from the far easier, quicker and cheaper method of dredging.
Some technical and economic experts would go so far as to say that, without the exploitation of this new-found resource, PADS in its present form and time-scale would be inconceivable. Certainly it will contribute signally to a process of development which will amount scenically to a transformation. If we return to our imaginary airline pilot, bringing his plane down into Hong Kong in 1999, it is not far-fetched to hear him saying: 'Ladies and gentlemen, we're landing on a reshaped island.'
Guangdong on the Move
A comprehensive survey of the Grand Design and its port works elements would have to focus, in some depth and successively, on several economic perspectives. Examples would be: Hong Kong's own economic strategies for the 21st century; the momentum of economic development throughout what is called the Asia Pacific rim; and the notable economic advances in the sub-regions of East and South-east Asia, from Korea in the north to the Indonesian archipelago in the south.