Marina Barrage - A City Reservoir

Singapore's latest downtown icon built across the mouth of the Marina Channel, the Marina Barrage. Its Singapore’s 15th reservoir, and the first in the heart of the city. With a catchment area of 10,000 hectares, or one-sixth the size of Singapore, the Marina catchment is the island’s largest and most urbanised catchment. Together with two other new reservoirs, the Marina Reservoir will boost Singapore’s water catchment from half to two-third’s of the country’s land area.

The Marina Barrage is the result of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s vision nearly two decades ago when he envisaged damming the mouth of the Marina Channel to create a freshwater reservoir.

The Marina Barrage is a 350-meter wide dam built across the Marina Channel to keep out seawater. Marina Reservoir combines with the future Punggol and Serangoon reservoirs will increase Singapore’s water catchment areas from half to two-thirds of Singapore’s land areas. With the barrage in place, the Marina Basin will turn into a body of freshwater through natural flushing in one two to years. The freshwater will then be treated using advanced membrane technology before consumption.

It is also part of a comprehensive flood control scheme to alleviate flooding in the low-lying areas in the city such as Chinatown, Boat Quay, Jalan Besar and Geylang. During heavy rain, the series of nine crest gates at the dam will be activated to release excess storm water into the sea when the tide is low. In the case of high tide, giant pumps which are capable of pumping an Olympics-size swimming pool per minute will drain excess storm water into the sea.



As the water in the Marina Basin is unaffected by the tides, its water level will be kept constant all year round. This is ideal for all kinds of recreational activities such as boating, windsurfing, kayaking and dragonboating etc. Just made my first visit today & below are the pictures taken. Enjoy, the view is really cool, but the night seems better. I'll be back!