Clear The Air News Blog Rotating Header Image

Green Sense

Bridge project on man-made island breached environmental permit, says Hong Kong green group

Ernest Kao ernest.kao@scmp.com

A green group claims the Highways Department violated the conditions of an environmental permit for a man-made island that forms part of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge project by failing to declare significant changes in reclamation work.

Green Sense says that the location plans it had inspected in the nine amended environmental impact assessment (EIA) reports clearly showed that cylindrical steel cells – sunk into the seabed in a circular form and filled with debris – were to be used along the entire length of the seawall structure.

But two years ago the department’s contractor had begun using rubble mounds in some of the seawalls that may have caused more marine pollution, without noting the change in any of its nine amended assessments.

Green Sense chief executive Roy Tam Hoi-pong said this could amount to a breach of the EIA ordinance, which states that any variation to a report must prove “no material change to the environmental impact”.

Tam added that the Highways Department should not have let the contractor do this just to speed up work.

He also said the Environmental Protection Department had failed in its job to check the Highways Department.

“It is clear that this was a major change and if the EPD had allowed this, then we believe it to be a serious mishap and a defeat in the ordinance’s purpose.”

Tam said he would write to the Department of Justice urging them to take legal action and called on the relevant departments to take responsibility.

Last week the Highways Department admitted that flaws in the reclamation process were the reason part of the artificial island had drifted up to seven metres, sparking concerns of safety and cost overruns.

It said the movements were due to the use of steel seawalls, which eliminate the need for dredging, being used in the city for the first time.

The Highways Department said it had consulted the EPD and both methods were “non-dredge methods” with less environmental impact. “The EPD considered that the concerned amendments on works details involved no change to the … EIA report and no variation to the [permit] would be required.”

Environment minister Wong Kam-sing also said the project complied with permit requirements. He said silt curtains would help keep sludge from spewing into surrounding waters.

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/1861933/bridge-project-man-made-island-breached

Hong Kong’s third-world water management system in urgent need of repair

20 March 2015

Asit K. Biswas

Over the past several decades, Hong Kong’s water supply and wastewater management practices have been on an unsustainable path. Poor planning, absence of sustained interest from its top policymakers, an uninformed public, lack of regular media scrutiny and a series of poor policy interventions have ensured that, today, it lags behind nearly all cities of similar levels of economic development in its management of water.

Hong Kong is a net water importer. Currently, 70-80 per cent is imported from Guangdong’s Dongjiang through multiple agreements. The Audit Commission reported in 1999 that the planners had so badly overestimated city water requirements in the 1989 agreement that some 716 million cubic metres of water literally went down the drain, which cost taxpayers, between 1994 and 1998, HK$1.7 billion.

Even after this sad performance, the next agreement was even worse. The requirement was again another overestimate. Consequently, between 2006 and 2012, the city had to pay for seven years of water imports but in reality used only about six years of water. This over-estimation cost the taxpayers another HK$2.8 billion.

As an adviser to 19 governments, I am not aware of a single city anywhere in the world which has consistently overestimated water requirements so badly for over two decades.

Not only has overestimation been a serious problem, but also no serious policy measures were taken to manage domestic and industrial water demands. At present, average water use in Hong Kong is about 220 litres per capita per day, a figure that is higher than in 2003. This is bad management since in nearly all similar cities of the world, the usage trends are generally declining because of better management practices and increasing awareness of the people that water is a scarce resource.

Accordingly, inhabitants of cities like Hamburg and Barcelona use about half that of an average Hongkonger. In Singapore, per capita water use has steadily come down in recent decades. It is now 152 litres per capita per day, which is still on the high side. An average Hongkonger uses 45 per cent more.

One of the reasons for this very high usage is because water and wastewater provisioning has been subsidised at higher levels with each passing year. The water tariff has remained the same since 1995, but costs of services have gone up steadily. This has resulted in some ridiculous situations, like the city providing private bottled water companies with highly subsidised water, which at the retail level is being sold at over 1,000 times the cost of city water.

The present pricing structure means that a round 14 per cent of Hong Kong residents do not pay for water and sewerage services. Each household now receives completely free 12 cubic metres of water every four months irrespective of their ability to pay. This is in contrast to Singapore, where its national water agency, PUB, not only completely recovers its costs but also makes a profit.

Furthermore, in Hong Kong, there have been no consistent attempts to educate the citizens on the importance of water as a strategic resource. This is again in sharp contrast to Singapore, where the population is regularly made aware of the value of water. The interactive permanent exhibitions of wastewater treatment and water management at its NEWater Visitor Centre and Marina Barrage have become major tourist destinations.

When compared to other Asian cities of similar levels of per capita gross domestic product, like Singapore, Tokyo or Osaka, urban water management in Hong Kong comes out very poorly. But even when compared to some cities in developing countries, like Cambodia’s Phnom Penh, Hong Kong does not fare well.

For the past 15 years, the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority has outclassed Hong Kong. Like in Hong Kong, Phnom Penh residents receive clean water which can be drunk straight from the tap. Both the poor and the rich pay for water at affordable prices, and no one receives free water, as in Hong Kong.

Phnom Penh’s water authority, a public-sector autonomous corporation, has been consistently profitable for over a decade and receives no subsidy. All its performance indicators have been consistently better than Hong Kong’s, with many of them better than in London or Los Angeles. Its planning and execution have also surpassed Hong Kong’s. For example, Phnom Penh’s bill collection ratio is almost 100 per cent, and unaccounted-for losses from the water system are about 6.5 per cent, compared to about 17 per cent in Hong Kong.

The question the Hong Kong public and policymakers need to ask and answer is: how did a third world city like Phnom Penh, which has limited technical and administrative capacities, no private sector to speak of, inadequate educational and management facilities and poor governance practices, manage to leapfrog a world-class city like Hong Kong so thoroughly in little over a decade?

Urban water management is not rocket science. There is no reason why any city of more than 200,000 people cannot have a good water system. It is high time for Hong Kong to do some serious soul-searching and find solutions which can radically improve its present urban water system.

Asit K. Biswas is the Distinguished Visiting Professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. An adviser to 19 countries, he received the Stockholm Water Prize, equivalent to a Nobel Prize in the area of water, in 2006.

http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1742839/hong-kongs-third-world-water-management-system-urgent-need

Green Initiatives Urged To Keep Prices Down And Create Jobs

Albert Wong and Tiffany Lam, SCMP – Updated on Feb 16, 2009

The Civic Party and Green Sense have called on the government to use any surplus on green initiatives that can keep prices down and create jobs. The party said HK$6 billion should be set aside to subsidise buses to convert to cleaner engines.

The proposal is part of the party’s “green new deal” – regular proposals to create a greener city while offering more business opportunities.

It referred to studies showing air pollution costs the city HK$1.5 billion a year in direct health costs, and HK$21 billion in lost productivity. The HK$6 billion would go towards either fixing after-treatment devices onto current buses by the end of this year, or replacing buses at least 14 years old with ones that run on the latest green engines by 2010. There have been a range of forecasts on the government’s fiscal situation, with predictions ranging from a small surplus to a small deficit.

Conservancy group Green Sense issued several talking points, urging the government to use HK$11 billion to create a “greener economy”.

It proposed the government shell out HK$4 billion to develop renewable energy, creating 7,000 jobs for architects and engineers; HK$3 billion should be allotted to buttress the city’s recycling facilities; and HK$2 billion could be used to promote green roofs to reduce the heat-island effect.

Green Sense also said HK$1.5 billion should be used to improve the efficiency of air conditioners, with the rest spent on policies such as promoting eco-tourism and developing a local market for organic foods. It estimated the package should generate 17,200 jobs.

Green Activist To Seek Legco Seat

Olga Wong – Updated on Jun 23, 2008 – SCMP

A green activist who fights against the so-called wall effect in building projects is now fighting for something more political – a seat in the Legislative Council.

If Roy Tam Hoi-pong, 28, gains enough votes, he would become the greenest lawmaker in Hong Kong – in terms of both his age and election platform.

Announcing his maiden bid for a seat in Kowloon West yesterday, the president of Green Sense said he hoped to attract middle-class and younger voters with an eco-friendly platform.

Labelling his campaign “Vote for a green Hong Kong”, Mr Tam vowed to tackle global warming, promote better town planning, regulate light pollution, explore green business opportunities, investigate cases of cruelty to animals, improve air quality, enhance green awareness in the business sector and strengthen school environmental education.

Politically, he supports universal suffrage for the election of the chief executive in 2012 and advocates the gradual abolition of functional constituencies.

A full-time secondary school teacher, Mr Tam studied environmental science at Chinese University. He is also a founder of Green Sense, which was established to promote green education in 2004. The group has been outspoken on town planning issues like the canyon effect of some high-rise developments.

Mr Tam said banners for his campaign team would be made of recycled material.