Hong Kong government is set to start one of its largest engineering projects by land reclamation. Land Reclamation is the process of creating new land from oceans, riverbeds or lake beds. Hong Kong plans on building a roughly 2,500 acrea island-roughly the size of 1,000 football fields-around the uninhabited Kau Yi Chau Islands. An additional 1,700 acrea of land reclamation around the island Hei Ling Chau may also be taken. This process is dangerous to the local marine life. Narrowing the passageway to the open sea will create an almost closed environment, affecting water currents and oxygen contents. This will allow algae to bloom, creating a red tide followed by a Dead Sea around the waterfront communities. Allowing this to happen will destroy fish breeding grounds, affect bird populations, and cause irreparable damage to the surrounding areas and communities. Asia in itself has aggressively built up reefs and atolls in the South China Sea just to expand its naval and military reach, disregarding concerns from its neighbors. The process to do this is to build a sea wall and then backfilling it with a lot of sediment. However, the sediment could get washed away by typhoons or lost in the co destruction process if the proper precautions are not taken. Land Reclamation in Asia is so common due to the fact the they require less environmental impact assessment then in western Europe, United States, or Australia. We simply can not stand back and watch as more wildlife is taken and destroyed.
