On Sat, 17 Jan 2009, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 13:22:01 on Sat, 17
Jan 2009, Recliner remarked:
Not on the flood plain, but on an artificial island, like Hong Kong.

Also Kansai and Kobe airports, which really are artificial islands.

And Incheon (aka Seoul International)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ye...g_location.svg

Maybe we could do something similar - fill in the whole Thames Estuary?

I think i was pimping this idea a while ago. I'd been looking at the
various epic works the Dutch did, particularly the building of the
IJsselmeer, and it occurred to me that we could do something similar. Not
just to the Thames estuary - to the entire Channel, between East Anglia
and the Netherlands. As with the IJ, you'd not totally close up the space,
but leave large canals running along the line of the existing coast (some
of it, at least), so that there was still access to the ports (and to
hydraulically separate the polders from the existing land).

This would not only create land for housing in the overcrowded southeast,
as well as a huge amount of agricultural land, but enable direct rail
links to northern Europe (including a Felixstowe - Rotterdam freight
line), provide opportunities to create huge amounts of ecologically vital
wetlands, and effectively eliminate the flood and erosion risk to the
Thames estuary and East Anglia. We could even build a new home for the
Trident fleet at the same time, to shut the jocks up.

I shall write to the environment secretary immediately. Where can one buy
a pen with green ink these days?

tom

--
.... but when you spin it it looks like a dancing foetus!