Last updated: Nov 2001
 Hong Kong Conservation News |
Forrest Fong
Long Valley: KCRC appeals against DEP¡¦s decision
KCRC lodged an appeal against the refusal of the Director of Environmental Protection to grant an environment permit for the project. The hearing began in April and there were more than 20 witnesses
from both the KCRC and EPD side, including experts on Fung Shui and wetlands (David Melville, the former Executive Director of WWF). The appeal hearing ended in June.
In addition to the monetary cost, there has been damage to Hong Kong¡¦s international reputation. Nearly $100 million has been spent on the appeal. This is indeed an enormous amount which could have been spent on environmental and community education. The need for the appeal is highly questionable. KCRC is owned 100% by the Government and the Transport Bureau is the government bureau which is responsible for the pushing the Lok Ma Chau spur line project: the government should have been able to solve this problem internally instead of spending large amounts of public money on the process.
If the appeal lodged by KCRC is successful, a viaduct will be built through the heart of Long Valley and the effects on the ecology of the valley will be adverse and huge. Various mitigation proposals which aim to reduce the environmental impact and to compensate for the loss of wetland have been put forward by KCRC. Given KCRC¡¦s abysmal record in managing environmentally sensitive projects as evidenced in the West Rail construction, however, it is difficult to have any confidence in its ability to put such mitigation measures successfully into practice.
Rejection of the Appeal, however, does not mean that the habitat of Long Valley will be safe. Long Valley still faces lots of threats besides the Lok Ma Chau spur line. It also faces various changes in environment following the completion of the Beas River channelisation project. There is the ongoing problem of illegal changes of land-use in farmland areas, and, in the near future, the proposed development in Kwu Tung. This shows there is a need to protect this fragile habitat in an active way: The Government has planned to protect part of the area as a Nature Park, and the Society has submitted an application to the Town Planning Board to rezone Long Valley as a Conservation Area. As happened with Sha Lo Tung, this project is being held-up by an appeal case. Merely striking a balance between in land-use and conservation is not enough. Development of a strategy on sustainable development is the long-term solution.
Designation of Long Valley as an ¡§Important Bird Area¡¨The wetland in Long Valley is unique in Hong Kong for its rich biodiversity and its importance to wildlife is undoubted. For this reason it was designated as part of the ¡§Important Bird Area¡¨ (IBA) by BirdLife International in mid-June. It became an important extension of the Mai Po and Inner Deep Bay Ramsar Site, adding Hong Kong¡¦s most significant frsh water floodplain/agricultural habitat to the IBA.
Community concerns: Joint Forum between Green Groups and Heung Yee KukThe Long Valley Campaign is not only about a piece of farmland being threatened by development. The issue has also highlighted the more general problems of land-use, planning and nature conservation. A joint working group was formed between the Heung Yee Kuk and local green groups after the DEP¡¦s rejection of the EIA reports on the Spur line project and North-South Lantau highway. The group seeks to achieve a balance between rural development and conservation and aims to work out strategies to be submitted to the government.
The Long Valley case has been widely reported by newspapers, radio, and on television. This has engendered a welcome debate in the local community on topics related to Hong Kong¡¦s environment. Long Valley has attracted the epithet of ¡§Hong Kong¡¦s second Mai Po¡¨ in the popular press and this has led to an increasing number of visitors to the valley. These are from all walks of life and include ordinary local people, schools, universities and tourists. While this is not a strictly accurate description of Long Valley, the potential to make it into a freshwater wetland, which would compliment Mai Po noe exists. It is now up to the government to secure the land and to ensure long-term funding is made available for the ongoing management of Long Valley.
One-day eco-tour around Hong Kong Recently a number of operators have been carrying out ¡§green tours¡¨ to various locations such as Luk Keng, Tsim Bei Tsui, Kadoorie Farm and Tai Tong Lichi Garden. These activities are organized by political parties or by local communities. However, many of these might actually be counter-productive in increasing public awareness of Hong Kong¡¦s natural environment. Some might even give the public a completely wrong perception of nature e.g. ¡§Crane-watching" tours at Luk Keng, when the birds there are, in fact, egrets and herons.
Tsim Bei Tsui is a good sightseeing area for Deep Bay and mangroves but, during weekends, the area is overrun by dozens of coaches containing hundreds visitors led by inexperienced tour guides who make lots of noise with loudspeakers. This is, in the end, counterproductive to environmental education. As an example, some visitors have spent a lot of time walking for long distances between the bridge and Tsim Bei Tsui car park without any field interpretation at all. Worse still, there are local tour operators who take visitors to the Mai Po panda shop, and claim that they have visited Mai Po. This can only have a negative effect on the public¡¦s image of our Ramsar wetland. Recently, there is also a new spot -- the International Wetland Park.
Hong Kong International Wetland ParkHong Kong International Wetland Park covers an area of 50 hectares close to Tin Shui Wai and Yuen Long New Town. The construction of the Wetland Park is divided into 2 phases; being the first phase, the exhibition pavilion, is now open to public and the second phase of the project is scheduled to be completed by 2004.
The area where the wetland park is now located was freshwater fishponds in the past, but they were filled up by the Government in the 1980s. In the 1990s, however, this area was designated as a natural conservation area as a compensation for the loss of wetlands habitat resulting from of the Tin Shui Wai development.
In 1998, the Hong Kong Tourist Association co-operated with Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department to develop an international conservation zone, the Wetland Park, so as to capitalise on Hong Kong¡¦s natural richness and help raise the public awareness of wetland conservation. However, before the wetland park can achieve its goal, the construction phase has already destroyed much valuable habitat.
What is perhaps more important is that the original intention for the land. It was meant to be an ecological mitigation area for the fishponds lost at Tin Shui Wai seems to have been largely forgotten by the Territory Development Department in their plans to build a park which is intended to attract several hundred thousand visitors each year. It is imperative that the same does not happen at Long Valley.
Illegal dumping and fishponds fillingDuring the second construction phase of the wetland park, huge amounts of mud have to be dredged so as to regenerate the filled fishponds as new freshwater lakes and gei wai. The contract requires all contractors are to convey the dredged mud to a legal dumping area. Contractors, however, have been found illegally dumping mud on the side of fishponds close to the Ramsar Site in an area of high ecological value which forms one of the sites for the HKBWS waterfowl survey.
By the time it happened and was reported by media in March, it was too late since more than 1.5 hectares of fishpond had already been filled up with the dredged mud. The Territory Development Department (TDD), plays a monitoring role over the construction work and should bear responsibility. In late March, an endangered Black-faced Spoonbill was spotted feeding in a narrow freshwater stream in the Wetland Park construction.
In addition to the Wetland Park, illegal dumping goes on elsewhere in the New Territories. In a previous bulletin we have reported the illegal dumping at the buffalo fields in Kam Tin from the KCRC Westrail construction. If anybody witnesses illegal dumping, please note down the place, time and the license number of the vehicle involved and report this to any regional office of Lands Department or Urban Planning Department.
Environmental Impact Assessment ReportAs required under the Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance (Cap. 499 S16), any designated project specified under schedule 2 of the ordinance, unless exempted, must follow the statutory process by submitting an EIA report for the construction and operation of the project in order to obtain a valid Environmental Permit. Proponents are required to carry out relevant observation and monitoring, and to propose means to avoid, minimize and control the adverse impact on environment caused by the designated projects. In addition, the Environmental Permit issued by EPD frequently imposes specific conditions relating to construction waste etc. In spite of this, however, developers and contractors frequently ignore these conditions.
The WestRail construction is an excellent example. The contractors employed by KCRC destroyed more than 2000 trees and illegally dumped both chemical batteries and dredged toxic soil both on and off the site leading to the pollution of the surface soil and underground water supplies. Although government EPD has successfully won over 100 prosecutions against the developer ¡V KCRC ¡V and its contractors, the damage continues as the fines imposed by law are small and are simply considered another business cost by the contractors. A serious review of environmental planning, protection and land use legislation is required to give some teeth to the legislation.
To learn more about the Environmental Impact Assessment, interested parties can visit the official website of the International Association For Impact Assessment at www.iaia.org which recommends that the EIA would be better implemented in the early stage of development. The Lok Ma Chau Spurline as an example. The Government approved the proposed construction of railway, which passes right through the freshwater wetlands in Long Valley in 1996, at a time when the EIA ordinance was not yet gazetted. The government was, therefore, only concerned about existing technical problems in buying the land from landowners when they processed the EIA report. When KCRC was asked to explain the ¡§fast-tracking¡¨ process for the East Rail and why the proposed line was the only solution, the KCRC submit much supplementary information to support the evidence quoted in their EIA report. On one hand, he wetland scientists from KCRC emphasised that the wetland in Long Valley is only agricultural land with low ecological value but, on the other hand, the KCRC proposed a number of mitigation measures to compensate the loss of this useless wetland which seems somewhat self-contradictory.
Route 10 Highway--- Lantau North to Yuen Long RoadIt remains doubtful whether an EIA report can assess the adverse impact resulting from a development effectively. Much depends on the quality and professional standard of the EIA consultants. The proposed Route 10 highway is a typical example. The proposed alignment of Route 10 Highway links up North Lantau and the Yuen Long Highway . It runs from Kwai Shek at Lantau North, via Tsing Lung Tau, the Tai Lam Tunnel and So Kwun Wat. This route further passes through Tai Lam Chung Tunnel to Yuen Long and finally ends at Sheung Shui. Cross-border traffic is expected to increase substantially necessitating a new road link. In order to accommodate the increase in cross-border traffic flow, a section of Route 10 will be linked with the proposed Lingdingyang Bridge and Route 7 from Belchers Bay to Aberdeen to form part of the strategic Western Highway between Hong Kong and Shekou in Shenzhen. This proposed Route10 Highway has been proposed and postponed several times in ten years but has recently been approved by the Government. Construction is expected to commence in 2002 and to be completed by 2007. When completed, it will be comparable to the Tsing Ma Bridge and the soon-to-be completed Ting Kau Bridge both in scale and in grandeur. Though the developers have conducted an Environmental Impact Assessment and submitted their EIA report, we do not believe that the data quoted in their EIA report is reliable. They stated in the EIA report that only 40 common bird species were recorded in the assessment area and that the vegetation found in the examined area is only common and local shrubland which is not important habitat for birds. In fact, according to records compiled by HKBWS members, more than 83 species, including White-bellied Sea Eagle, Crested Kingfisher, Crested Serpent Eagle, Crested Goshawk as well as Bonelli¡¦s Eagle have seen. Some of them such as the Pied Kingfisher and White-breasted Waterhen were even found breeding in the impacted area.
Differences in the number of bird species recorded by HKBWS members and EIA report were found. This is because the consultant conducted their EIA survey from July to December, a period which, according to the Agriculture, Conservation and Fisheries Department, covered both wet and dry seasons.
However, the accuracy of their survey is doubtful. As is common knowledge, the period from April to June is the peak breeding season for birds. July to December most definitely is not! The report stated clearly that they found no breeding birds ¡V hardly a surprise ¡V and did so in such a way as to suggest that this showed the low value of the site for birds! The data the Highway Department collected from 3 one-day surveys in the above quoted period is too small for serious analysis. It is ridiculous to draw a conclusion based on the data collected from three surveys only and thence to declare that the ecosystem in the area is of no value. We would hope that EIAs prepared by consultants in the near future will be conducted on a more accurate basis and over a more representative time frame. When questioned about the reason for the low number of counts the consultant noted that cost was an issue in such a low number of counts. Some blame must therefore lie with the contractor for allocating insufficient funds to conduct adequate fieldwork.
We hope by the time the professional consultants have chance to conduct an EIA report in near future, they better not put the convenience and the benefit they gain at the highest rank. Indeed, the consultants should prepare an EIA report which is reliable, feasible and highly transparent.
| Mai Po Update |
By Lew Young
Waterfowl Collection
The pond at the back of the Education Centre has been drained down and repairs works are being carried out to the bunds. Part of this is involves widening and strengthening the bund around the edge
of the pond because it has weakened over the years with the waves washing against it. By widening the bund, it also means that the droppings from the Cormorants roosting on the trees around the
pond will now fall on the bund, rather than directly into the water which will cause the water quality in the pond to deteriorate.
Pond 20 Pond 20 has also been drained so that the Cat Fish (¡§Tong Sut¡¨) in the ponds can be removed. Over the past couple of winters, these fish have slowly eaten all the grasses in the ponds which the wintering Teal like to roost amongst and which Wigeon graze on. By removing the fish, we hope that these grasses will slowly grow back and attract more Teal and Wigeon to the pond this coming winter.
Pond 23The earthmoving works at the sluice gate end of the pond has been completed and the pond has been refilled with rainwater. You can see that three low bunds have been built across the pond for roosting birds. Some of the trees that were growing on a bund in the middle of the pond has been retained and the bund widened to form a small island. This island will gradually be planted with the intention that it can be used as a roost. The works on the middle and back part of the pond will take place this coming winter.
Construction of a boardwalk close to the Education CentreWork has begun on building a fixed boardwalk through the landward end of the mangroves in gei wai #13, through the reedbeds in gei wai #14, and then through a freshwater marsh in Pond 16c at the back of the Scrape. This project is being funded by the Pedal Cart Association and is aimed at giving school students, weekend visitors and other visitor to have a chance to walk through a series of different wetland habitat within a short distance of the Education Centre. It is planned that the works will be completed by the end of September.
| Past Conservation News |
