Cliff wrote:

On Mon, 05 Sep 2005 04:08:14 GMT, BottleBob
wrote:

The Japanese built "Kansai International Airport" on a man-made
island
5 kilometers out to sea.

http://www.takenaka.co.jp/takenaka_e...ix/kiindex.htm

It's not built on much sediment, IIRC.
And it's sinking at the rate of several feet per year as I recall
it.
"has sunk 40 feet since construction began in 1987"

That's perhaps an old quote .. I don't know when it was written.


Cliff:

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_...tional_Airport

Construction started in 1987. The sea wall was finished in 1989 (made
of rocks and 48,000 tetrahedral concrete blocks). Three mountains were
excavated for 21 million cubic meters of landfill. 10,000 workers and 10
million work hours over 3 years, using 80 ships, were needed to complete
the thirty-meter layer of earth over the sea floor and inside the sea
wall. In 1990, a three-kilometer bridge was completed to connect the
island to the mainland at Rinku-Town, at a cost of $1 billion.
Satellite closeup of the airport and its bridge. Construction of the
second runway-island is underway. Rinku Town is visible on the mainland.

By then, the island had sunk 8 meters (far more than predicted) and the
project became the most expensive civil works project in modern history
after 20 years of planning, 3 years of construction and several billion
dollars of investment.

The rate of sinking has slowed down markedly in recent years (just 17 cm
in 2002). In 2003, believing that the sinking problem was almost over,
the airport operators started the construction of a 4,000m second
runway,
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--
BottleBob
http://home.earthlink.net/~bottlbob