A look at a dump

Travelling down the Tampines Road of old back in the 1970s and 1980s, it was hard not to miss the convoys of trucks on their eastward journeys down the road.  The trucks, laden with much of what Singapore discarded, were headed to what then became Singapore’s last onshore dumping ground, occupying some 234 hectares of land on the right bank of Sungei Serangoon, which before the conversion to a rubbish dump site in 1970, was a large swamp (mangrove swamps lined much of Singapore’s original coastline, particularly along the northern coast) rich in bird life.

A very natural looking man made stream close to the area where a village, Kampong Beremban, once was.

Taking a look around the former Lorong Halus dumping grounds these days, it is hard to imagine that it as a dump site for close to three decades (it was closed on 31 March 1999 and incinerated refuse has since been dumped offshore at Pulau Semakau). Part of the area today has been remade and is now a man-made wildlife sanctuary, the Lorong Halus Wetland. Despite the obvious signs of human intervention, the area (including that beyond the sanctuary) does have an aesthetic value from a natural environment (albeit man made) perspective, and offers that escape that can be hard to find in an island overgrown with too much concrete.

Another part of the former dump site.

The wetland, is also linked to a bridge across what has since the mouth of the river was dammed, become Singapore’s 17th reservoir, the Serangoon Reservoir. The bridge provides access to what was the left bank of Sungei Serangoon, where the new public housing estate of Punggol has been developed, via the Punggol Promenade Riverside Walk.

Sungei Serangoon today.

For those familiar with the area, the area of Sungei Serangoon upstream from Lorong Halus at the end of Upper Serangoon Road was where old Kangkar Village was. Kangkar Village was a fishing port and once a base for fish traders and also Singapore’s fishing fleet, which numbered some ninety vessels in 1984 when it was closed to be moved to Punggol. The location of Kangkar today would be close to where Buangkok East Drive is.

Punggol and Sengkang public housing estates looming in the background on the left bank of Sungei Serangoon – Sengkang was the area where Kangkar Village was.

Interestingly, Lorong Halus was also where Singapore’s last night soil collection centre was located. The practice of collecting night soil (human waste) using buckets in both urban and rural areas, was carried out from the 1890s up to early 1987 when the last rural outhouses were used. Besides the rufuse that was generated by Singapore, also buried at Lorong Halus is the remains of a false killer whale which was stranded in shallow waters off Tuas in early 1994. The wetland was opened in 2011 and more information can be found at this link.

The bridge across the reservoir.

The view on the bridge.

A resident of the wetland.