Sungei Simpang Kiri is a river located in eastern part of

Sembawang Sembawang is a planning area and residential town located in the North Region of Singapore. Sembawang planning area is bordered by Simpang to the east, Mandai to the south, Yishun to the southeast, Woodlands to the west and the Straits of Jo ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

. The river starts near Canberra Link and discharges into the

Straits of Johor The Johore Strait (also known as the Tebrau Strait, Straits of Johor, Selat Johor, Selat Tebrau, and Tebrau Reach) is an international strait in Southeast Asia, between Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia. Geography The strait separates the Ma ...

Location

Sungei Simpang Kiri is a river located in eastern part of

. The river starts at the intersection where Yishun Avenue 2 and Canberra Link and ends at

People's Association The People's Association (PA) is a statutory board under the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) of the Government of Singapore that oversees neighbourhood grassroots communities and social organisations. Established in 1960, it wa ...

Water Venture (Sembawang). It discharges into the

e. The river is named after the

maritime Maritime may refer to: Geography * Maritime Alps, a mountain range in the southwestern part of the Alps * Maritime Region, a region in Togo * Maritime Southeast Asia * The Maritimes, the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Princ ...

Suku Seletar tribe who used to live along the river banks.

History

In 1970, the river banks were used extensively for

rubber plantations ''Hevea brasiliensis'', the Pará rubber tree, ''sharinga'' tree, seringueira, or most commonly, rubber tree or rubber plant, is a flowering plant belonging to the spurge family Euphorbiaceae originally native to the Amazon basin, but is now pan ...

and

mangrove swamp Mangrove forests, also called mangrove swamps, mangrove thickets or mangals, are productive wetlands that occur in coastal intertidal zones. Mangrove forests grow mainly at tropical and subtropical latitudes because mangroves cannot withstand fre ...

s surrounded the river. There were also villages close to the river. After urban development, the river was straightened and turned into a concrete canal. A

linear park A linear park is a type of park that is significantly longer than it is wide. These linear parks are strips of public land running along canals, rivers, streams, defensive walls, electrical lines, or highways and shorelines. Examples of linear p ...

was also constructed to run across the river banks. A section of the river, known as Sungei Simpang Kanan, is slated to undergo another redevelopment under the

Public Utilities Board The Public Utilities Board (PUB) is a statutory board under the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment of the Government of Singapore responsible for ensuring a sustainable and efficient water supply in Singapore. The PUB regulates an ...

Active, Beautiful, Clean (ABC) program and the redevelopment is expected to end in 2019.

Ecology

The river is home to apple snails as well as

horseshoe crab Horseshoe crabs are marine and brackish water arthropods of the family Limulidae and the only living members of the order Xiphosura. Despite their name, they are not true crabs or crustaceans: they are chelicerates, most closely related to arachn ...

s. Species of birds such as

egret Egrets ( ) are herons, generally long-legged wading birds, that have white or buff plumage, developing fine plumes (usually milky white) during the breeding season. Egrets are not a biologically distinct group from herons and have the same build ...

s and

kingfisher Kingfishers are a family, the Alcedinidae, of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, ...

s can be found on the river banks. The secondary forests at the

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environment ...

of the river constitute the habitat of species such as ''

Coelognathus flavolineatus ''Coelognathus flavolineatus'', the black copper rat snake or yellow striped snake, is a species of colubrid snake found in Southeast Asia. This species was previously recognized in the genus ''Elaphe''. Distribution * Brunei Darussalam * Camb ...

''.

References

External links

Sungei Simpang Kiri Park Connector
Sembawang Rivers of Singapore {{asia-river-stub