Flooding and natural heritage - there's a link

Letter from Vinita Ramani Mohan Today Online 15 Jun 11;

AS A resident of Bukit Timah, there are two issues that I have been following closely over the past year. The first is the intermittent flash floods and the second is the closure in two weeks of the Tanjong Pagar and Bukit Timah railway stations and the return of the Malayan railway land to Singapore.

Though the two issues at first glance seem unrelated, they both pertain to our natural environment and how rapidly the landscape of Singapore is changing.

A recent letter to Today provided a refreshingly intelligent perspective that aptly connected to The Nature Society's proposal "The Green Corridor - A Proposal to Keep the Railway Lands as a Continuous Green Corridor".

Mr Liew Kai Khiun's letter ("Green lungs to quell floods", June 8) states that there is a "correlation between the floods and ... rapid urbanisation resulting from the property boom". He also goes on to state that "building and transportation infrastructural projects are instrumental in displacing organically permeable soil", which ultimately means rainwater does not get stored or absorbed naturally.

Singapore has rapidly urbanised and in Bukit Timah, we have seen the disastrous effects of condominium projects coupled with old canals that are insufficiently equipped to handle heavy rains. The area is now infamous for roads that look like Venice's waterways, with none of the associated romance.

The Nature Society's proposal and the Green Corridor - a citizen campaign that has been separately established to advocate for a green Singapore - addresses the same issues that Mr Liew's letter touches upon, namely, the potential dangers in replacing lush, beautiful railway lands with concrete condominium and shopping mall developments.

What the proposal could not have anticipated is the recurrent floods that have become a mainstay of life in Singapore. With this added dimension, the need for a Green Corridor and for recommendations from individuals like Mr Liew seems all the more urgent.

Like many Singaporeans, I still feel what is missing is a spirit of engagement that sees the potentially transformative power of citizen opinion. Citizens like Mr Liew and the nearly 3,000 individuals who have signed up to the Green Corridor campaign ought to be heard and their ideas ought to be considered seriously.