"Costly" Flood Solutions

With the recent flooding in Singapore, we are all concerned about what the government is going to do about it. One of the less expensive solutions was to raise the level of Wilby Road. This would prevent the risk of flood waters entering Tessarina Condominium's basement car park whenever Bukit Timah Road is flooded. However, the raising of roads only treats the symptoms of the floods. Built-up areas like Bukit Timah and Orchard will require better solutions than raising the level of the area. Nanyang Technological University School of Civil & Environmental Engineering associate professor Tan Soon Keat says that the built-up areas would require much more expensive solutions as they would need to physically divert the flow to a storage pond somewhere else. However, where to locate these ponds is a very difficult question to answer.

I feel that the government should do everything they can, no matter how expensive it is, to prevent or minimize the effects of the frequent floods which were supposed to be a 'once in fifty years' thing. It would really benefit the the citizens of Singapore and let them feel that the government actually cares about them and their welfare. In conclusion, though the solutions for preventing future floods may be costly, if would be really beneficial in both the short and long run as the pros outweigh the cons by a large margin.