Hong Kong's current pollution crisis primarily stemsfrom the fact that for years it has been overburdening thedispersive capability of the sea around it with an increasingpollutant input from its people and the services they need,the animals it breeds and some of its manufacturing pro-cesses.

Historically it has never paid the same attention to itssanitation infrastructure as it has, for instance, to buildingroads, constructing skyscrapers and erecting factories.

it has recognised the need for efficiency in its port, in itssupply of power and water, in its telecommunications net-work, in upgrading its industries and in building enoughhousing estates, etc. But the same need for efficiency inwater quality management, sewerage, sewage treatment anddisposal has been a dirty, largely underground, business ithas tended to prefer to pay less attention to and a costHong Kong has preferred to avert.

The result is it has an infrastructure that is inadequate.Worse still, it is all mixed up.

The state of the harbour, the pollution of the beachesand rivers, the smell of Kaitak Nullah greeting tourists and,in fact, the deteriorating state of most of Hong Kong'ssurrounding waters has heightened community awarenessthat Hong Kong now has a problem it logically must stopneglecting.

Finally, it has begun facing up to the need for sensibleaction in its perceived pollution crisis with Governmentleadership.

The Governor announced in October a $10 billion pro-gramme for a better sewerage system for the territories hasbeen mapped out.

The programme, which will be implemented over thenext 10 years, includes the construction of sewage collec-tion, treatment and disposal facilities. These will refurbishand reinforce the existing sewerage system which has beenbuilt up piecemeal over the last century.

"Construction of projects costing about $2 billion haseither started already or will start during the next year,"Sir David Wilson told the Legislative Council. "These in-clude the north-west New Territories trunk sewer and ascheme to pump treated effluent from Sha Tin for dis-charge into the Kaitak Nullah.

"This imaginative proposal will reduce the pollution ofTolo Harbour while at the same time helping to improvethe condition of the Kaitak Nullah," he said.

Other projects in hand for the improved sewerage infras-tructure of the whole territory are new sewerage masterplans for East Kowloon and Hong Kong Island South,Tsuen Wan/Kwai Chung, North-west Kowloon, Tolo Har-bour and Port Shelter.

In his address Sir David also gave a brief account of theprogress of the Livestock Waste Control Scheme which wasplanned to extend gradually to cover the entire territory inthe next eight years.

"in time, cleaning up the watercourses will lead to asignificant reduction in the pollution of our coastal waters,particularly in Tolo Harbour," he said.

The Governor revealed also the Government's intentionto put all Hong Kong waters under control within the nextfive years.

As to the long-term waste disposal strategy, Sir Davidoutlined a programme that involved two huge landfill sitesin the New Territories and the construction of Hong Kong'sfirst refuse transfer station in Kowloon Bay (see P. 21).

A contract for the construction of a chemical wastetreatment centre at Tsing Yi would be awarded this year,he said.

To round up the environment section in his speech, theGovernor referred to the newly enacted Noise ControlOrdinance which should be fully implemented by the mid-dle of this year (see P. 18).

"These measures are not going to make Hong Kong aquiet city/' he said. "But they will help to keep noise at amore tolerable level."Sewerage and Sewage Disposal

Hong Kong's sewerage is constructed with separate sys-tems for foul and surface or storm water. Storm waterflows are discharged directly into streams, nullahs andmarine waters, while the contents of foul sewers are dis-charged to various types of treatment plants.

Industrial, commercial and residential developments alldischarge various types of waste water. The clean water, egfrom roof drainage, cooling processes and airconditioning,should be discharged to the surface water sewerage system,while the polluted flows, eg from lavatories, bathrooms,kitchens and markets, should be discharged into the foulsewers.

The Bulletin / January 1989 15

Many factories now use chemicals in the manufacturingprocess and require to discharge residues and waste ma-terials. These may be discharged to the foul sewers provid-ed they meet pollution control standards, set in order toprotect the sewerage system, people working in it, and theenvironment.

It may be necessary for some factories to install treat-ment processes or to modify their procedures slightly inorder to meet these standards, but the overall cost is likelyto be quite low,

In practice, during Hong Kong's rapid developmentmany factories and commercial developments have beenconstructed with discharges connected to the wrong sys-tem. The consequence of this is that in almost all urbanareas of Hong Kong (including the New Towns) both sys-tems are polluted and need to be tackled.

The Environmental Protection Department has been pro-gressively investigating factory and commercial buildings,identifying illegal and wrong connections in the drainage,and recommending remedies. The enforcement action isthen taken up by the Buildings and Lands Departmentunder the Buildings Ordinance.

Though this work has achieved good results, it is pains-taking, and it will take many years to cover the more than15,000 factories that produce industrial effluents, apartfrom restaurants and other commercial establishments.

In order to tackle the problems of polluted surfacewater systems on a regional basis, and ensure that there issufficient capacity in the foul system to take the divertedflows, sewerage master plans are being developed for theurban areas. The first of these, in East Kowloon, was start-ed in early 1987, and is now in the final stages.

Survey work on this plan included closed circuit televi-sion in the sewers and laboratory analysis of the contents.The surveys revealed that over half of the polluted flows inEast Kowloon are discharged into the surface water system.

A comprehensive plan has now been prepared to inter-cept these flows in areas where drainage modifications aredifficult, and to discharge them into the foul sewers. Inother areas amended legislation will be implemented tocompel dischargers to use the sewerage systems properly,

A programme of construction costing over $600 millionwill ensure that the foul sewerage system, presently over-burdened for much of its length, will be able to handle theincreased demand.

To complement the sewerage master plans a study isbeing carried out to develop the sewage disposal facilitiesthat will be needed over the next two decades. The last re-view of the disposal system was in the early 1970s, whichrecommended that in the urban areas around VictoriaHarbour, screening plants discharging to sea outfalls withdiffusers would provide the level of treatment required.

With the increased levels of population and industry, andthe development of further reclamations, this strategy willno longer provide the standard of water quality requiredand there are signs already of local deterioration. The se-wage disposal study is examining all the sources of sewagein the urban area with the aim of developing an integratedsystem of treatment and disposal.

In order to do this a computer-based mode! of Hong

Kong waters has been developed to test the various treat-ment and disposal options, and discharge locations. Thismode! will also be used to predict the effects on waterquality of the massive reclamations planned to be construc-ted for port and airport facilities,

The sewage study will be complete by the end 1989, butthe detailed design work and construction of the enormousfacilities will take a further five years.

"This other side of it, getting rid of it once you got itail in the right pipes is the sewage strategy study," saysa pollution control expert, "We are looking at whether weput it all into a very elaborate treatment works and turnout drinking water. You know along the Thames the waterin the taps has been through i think 13 sets of kidneys be-fore it gets out to sea.

"That's one extreme. The other extreme is that you putin these huge pipes and huge pumps and you don't treat it.You pump it out to sea. But you do control what is goinginto the pipes. If it's sewage it's no problem. This is whatwe use the Water Pollution Control Ordinance for.

"One of the advantages I see with the long pipes and thepumps is that it is a very robust solution. It is quite simpleto keep it going. If maintenance standards don't keep upto what they might be it still functions. And that is prob-ably a better solution for the future than an elaborate high-tech treatment plant.

" I f you go into China and look around their plantsyou'll see plants constructed by the French and the Ger-mans and the English. All are perfectly good plants whichare working. But when you go and look at the pollutioncontrol side you find nobody's been near it since it wascommissioned, it is not working.

"So I think it is a bit of a question mark about how wewould maintain the system. But if you've got big pumpsand big pipes you have got to keep it going, if the pumpsaren't working then it would start to flood all over theplace. So it's not just a question of poor water quality.You're inundated. You've got to keep those pumps going.

"But if you go the other route and you treat it you endup with sludges. And sludges that, if you haven't controlledwhat's going into the sewage, contains all the nasties. Theyend up with the sludge and you've got to do somethingwith it. At the present time the most feasible way to get ridof it is to put it in the sea. So you end up doing the samething, dumping it out to sea.

"You could press it and dry it which is very expensiveand then put it on a land-fill site. But that starts to buildup your land-fill site which you are trying to conserve."

In all this the businessman is not going to involved in allthat amount of expense, is he?

"The better the infrastructure the less he'll have tospend."North West New Territories Trunk Sewer

This is a major scheme which is needed to cope withdomestic and industrial wastes from the rapidly develop-ing northwest New Territories. The normal solution to dis-posing of the wastes from these areas would be to treat thewastes and dispose of them by the shortest route to DeepBay.

But Deep Bay is a highly sensitive environment whichcan accept little in the way of increased pollution load.

16 The Bulletin / January 1989

The effluents will therefore be pumped to a preliminarytreatment plant at. San Wai and conveyed from there in a3.9 km tunnel underneath the Castle Peak range beforebeing discharged into Urmston Road along a 2,6 km sub-marine outfall.

The first stage of this elaborate scheme to protect DeepBay is designed to cater for an initial population of 410,000in the Yuen Long and Tin Shui Wai area. The sewerage sys-tem will be expanded in the second stage to meet the de-mand when the population increases to an estimate of605,000 in later years.

Also, land is being set aside for secondary and, if neces-sary, tertiary sewage treatment works should this level oftreatment prove to be necessary,

The cost for the first stage is $561 million and thisshould be completed by the end of 1994. If additionaltreatment is required the cost will rise to over a billiondollars.Tolo Harbour Effluent Export Scheme

This scheme aims to kill two birds with one stone by onthe one hand reducing pollution levels in Tolo Harbour andon the other improving conditions in the Kaitak Nullah,

To do this, treated effluent from Tai Po Sewage Treat-ment Works (STW) will be pumped to Sha Tin STW via asubmarine pipeline across Tolo Harbour where it will becombined with the treated effluent from Shatin STW be-fore being pumped through a tunnel under Tates Cairn tothe Kaitak Nullah.

The treated effluent produced by the two STWs in ToloHarbour meets normal international standards for second-ary treatment but it still presents too great a pollution loadfor the very sensitive environment in Toio Harbour, wherelimited natural flushing and progressive reclamation presentsevere constraints.

The diversion of the treated effluent to Victoria Harbourvia Kaitak Nullah, will have the benefit of providing a flush-ing flow of relatively clean water to the heavily pollutedKaitak Nullah.

Construction of the scheme is programmed to start in1990 and be completed in 1994. Estimated capital cost is$553 million.Livestock Waste

Livestock waste is one of the more serious sources oforganic pollution, which leads to depletion of oxygen inmarine and inland waters, killing aquatic life and reducingthe amenity value of the waters through smells and othernuisances.

The first phase of a nine-year programme to controllivestock waste began in June last year when livestockkeeping was prohibited in all urban areas (which comprisesHong Kong island, Kowloon and the New Towns), and sub-ject to pollution control standards in the hinterlands ofTolo Harbour, and Anglers and Silvermine Bay beach.

By last October 816 out of 831 farms in the areas wherelivestock keeping is no longer allowed had given up thebusiness and the remaining few farms were winding downtheir operations. Farms which were in active use when thenew controls came into operation are generally eligible toreceive an ex-gratia allowance when they cease operation.Over 500 allowances have been paid to farmers in prohibi-tion areas.

Enforcement .Lu>' f;-"7>,6nt action by EPD has until now centred onthe '.he prohibition pi^moition areas. EPD staff have conducted 611 farmvisits for enforcement purposes and given 134 verbal warn-ings, In 63 C? of these cases a written warning has followedwhere o/here .no accion has been observed, and in 44 cases a fur-ther written warning has been issued, The next step is pro-secution, which is now being considered for several intract-able cases.

in the control areas capital grants are provided byGovernment to subsidise to a large extent the works neededto convert farms to pollution controlled operation. EPD hasreceived 35 applications so far and has made payments on10 of them, in addition 119 ex-gratia allowances have beenpaid to farmers in control areas who opted to give up live-stock keeping.

To support farmers' endeavours to control pollutionfrom livestock keeping the Government has set up demon-stration treatment units at Ta Kwu Ling Government Farm,in addition a number of private farms are being providedwith pollution control equipment to further demonstratethe operation of such facilities to farmers.Water Control Zones {WCZ)

The Water Pollution Control Ordinance allows forphased declaration of WCZs so that sewage and industrialeffluents can be progressively brought under control bya system of licensing.

So far, two WCZs have been declared: Tolo WCZ onJuly 1, 1987 and the Southern WCZ on August 1, 1988.

The phasing for the remaining 8 WCZ's is:- 1989/90 Port Shelter and junk Bay- 1990/91 Deep Bay, North Western & Mirs Bay/Eastern- 1991/92 Eastern Buffer, Wester Buffer & Victoria.Junk Bay is accorded high priority because the area is

undergoing rapid and extensive urban and industrial devel-opment. The Government wishes to establish proper con-trols at the start so that the water which is such an im-portant focal point of the New Town is maintained in satis-factory condition.

Port Shelter is an important recreational resource whichmust be safeguarded. There are eight public bathing beachesin the region, which is also the most popular area forsecondary contact water sports in Hong Kong.

Southern WCZ, which contains 21 gazetted public bath-ing beaches, was declared in August 1988 in view of thecontinuing decline of beach water quality. This will bringsewage discharges under control on the April 1, 1989though some useful progress in improving the operation ofindividual package sewage treatment plants in the area hasalready been made.

Apart from legislative control, a large number of short-term measures have been initiated and many of theseshould be completed before the next swimming season.These include the diversion of a major polluted stormwaterdrain at Repulse Bay, interception of dry weather flowfrom a number of drains at Stanley Main beach and repairwork on the Repulse Bay submarine outfall.

Other improvement works which will take a little longerto implement are planned for Repulse Bay, Stanley Main,Middle Bay, Chung Horn Kok, Rocky Bay/Shek O, DeepWater Bay and Stanley Village Beach.

The Bulletin / January 1989 17