Providing aggregates for a major development. The Hong Kong container port and airport projects

Abstract

This paper describes work currently under way for port and airport development in Hong Kong, with particular reference to earthmoving and rock supply for bulk fill and sea defences. Given the physical geography of the territory, the only feasible site for a replacement airport is a coastal platform created by reclamation of land from the sea. Taken with the land required for transport links to the new airport, urban development and container-port construction, this infrastructure creates a very large demand for bulk and sea defences. This demand is being met partly by land borrowing and partly by newly discovered sand deposits. Marine sand can be dredged and placed at very high production rates, with large financial benefit. Marine sand deposits do not, of course, yield rock, and the resulting large shortfall in special rock for sea defences is being met by the local quarrying industry from imports of rock won on islands in Chinese waters.