Estuary Processes and Managment - River Dynamics and Integrated River Management - page 494

for the South East Kowloon Development (SEKD) around the old Kai Tak airport. In recent years, the
remaining two reclamations on the Hong Kong Island have been the focus of considerable public debate.
The Hong Kong government has taken the initiative to review again the reclamations plans and the
reclamation area of CRIII has been reduced to 18 hectares from the originally planned 32 hectares. It is
of interest to study the effect of the drastic changes in coastal configuration and the proposed reclamation
plan on tidal currents and water quality in the harbor.
Fig. 8.29 Existing and proposed large scale reclamation in Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong (yellow color: proposed
reclamation, other colors: existing reclamation)
The effect of the existing large scale land reclamation and maximum possible Central and Wan Chai
reclamation on tidal circulation and flushing in Victoria Harbor were computed by a calibrated three-
dimensional hydrodynamic model for the Pearl River estuary (Kuang and Lee, 2004). In this study, this
3D hydrodynamic model with 10 uniform layers in the vertical direction was used to study the changes
in tidal circulation and flushing in Victoria Harbor due to both existing reclamation and further Central
and Wan Chai reclamation. The Pearl River Estuary Model was set up for studying the tidal circulation of
Hong Kong coastal waters, and it uses a 230 u 159 boundary-fitted orthogonal grid, with a refined grid
size of 45 m to 75 m around Victoria Harbor (Fig. 8.30).
Fig. 8.30 Computational grid around Victoria Harbor with the coastline of year (a) 1975 and (b) 2003 the blue line:
coastline after further maximum possible reclamation in central area)