Using an Environmental Monitoring and Management Plan to protect Singapore’s natural heritage

We helped Singapore protect the environment while supporting land reclamation work undertaken by Shell.

Located off Singapore’s southwest mainland is Shell’s largest refinery: the Bukom Refinery. Shell needed more land to expand their petrochemical plant in order to develop a new world class ethylene cracker. They decided to create the required space by connecting three islands to reclaim additional land: Pulau Busing, Pulau Ular and Pulau Bukom Kechil. To plan and carry out the reclamation work, Shell worked closely with Singapore’s national developer of industrial infrastructure – JTC Corporation (JTC).

JTC asked DHI Singapore to execute an Environmental Monitoring and Management Plan (EMMP) to ensure the works had minimal potential environmental impact on the surrounding area. Our EMMP included:

• establishment of an environmental baseline
• sediment plume forecast modelling
• sediment spill monitoring
• control monitoring of environmental indicators
• spill hindcast modelling
• habitat monitoring
• information management systems
• real-time data collection
• daily compliance reporting (seven days a week)

Prior to the start of the reclamation works, JTC undertook a coral relocation project to preserve the coral biodiversity of the Terumbu Bayan reef located close to Pulau Ular. More than 3,500 coral colonies – 35% of the live hard coral cover of the Terumbu Bayan reef – were moved from Terumbu Bayan to other designated receptor sites in Singapore. Thanks to the success of the EMMP, JTC was able to facilitate the large scale reclamation of three islands with minimal impact to the local environment and without harming Singapore’s natural heritage.