New Manila International Airport: A $15 Billion Gamble Facing Sinking Land and Floods

The Need for a New Airport

• ✈️ Nino Aquino International Airport (NAIA), the Philippines' main hub, is severely oversubscribed, handling 50 million passengers annually, far exceeding its 35-40 million capacity.
• 💡 Expansion of NAIA is not feasible due to its dense urban surroundings, necessitating the creative solution of building a new airport on reclaimed land.

New Manila International Airport (NMIA) Project

• 🏗️ The New Manila International Airport (NMIA) project aims to be one of the world's largest, covering 2,500 hectares and designed to accommodate 100 million passengers per year.
• 🛣️ Significant infrastructure, including expressways and rail lines, is being developed to connect the airport, which is being built on reclaimed land in Manila Bay.
• 🏢 The design features a single, massive passenger terminal, a large cargo terminal, and plans for four runways capable of handling 240 aircraft movements per hour.

Land Reclamation and Its Challenges

• 🌊 The airport's foundation is being built on 150 million cubic meters of material dredged from the sea, a process that can lead to soil liquefaction.
• 🛠️ To combat instability, dynamic compaction is used, involving heavy hammers to compress the soil and displace water.
• ⚠️ A major hurdle was the shortage of borrow material (sand), a globally scarce resource, which caused project delays.

Environmental and Geological Concerns

• 📈 Experts warn that the developer's sea level rise projections (5.3 mm/year) are underestimated for Manila Bay, with actual rates potentially reaching 13-15 mm per year.
• ⛈️ Coupled with storm surges and changing rain patterns, the airport site, located in a typhoon region and a top flood-prone area, faces a high risk of increased flooding.
• 🌍 The airport is situated in a seismically active zone (Pacific Ring of Fire), increasing the likelihood of earthquakes and tsunamis, with soft clay and sand layers exacerbating liquefaction risks.

Mitigation and Controversies

• 🪨 Engineers are employing measures like rock revetments, geo grids, deep cement mixing, and viro flotation to stabilize the ground and raise the land mass by 4 meters.
• 📉 Despite mitigation efforts, experts fear that ground sinking and flooding could render runways unusable within 30 years.
• 🌳 Environmental concerns include irreversible damage to Manila Bay's ecosystem, with scientists questioning the effectiveness of planted mangroves.
• 🏘️ The project also faces criticism for displacing over 700 families with little or no compensation, impacting local communities and livelihoods.
• ⚖️ The developer, SMC, has labeled the project