Set in a
septic sea
Hong Kong
In early 1989 an outspoken environmental official in Hong Kong described the colony as having a "first world economy and a Third World environment." It was easy to see why. The spar-Wing skyscrapers in the central business district overlooked a harbour smeared by large patches of oily refuse and swamped each day by hundreds of thousands of tons of untreated or only partially treated sewage. But the main problem most people faced was air and noise pollution. Thunderous pile drivers jolted people in homes and offices, while teachers in some schools next to highways often had to use a megaphone to make themselves heard in class.A HK$20 billion (US$2.56 billion), 10-year clean-up plan was announced in mid-1989 and there is a rapidly growing Environmental Protection Department (EPD). Environmental officials will tell you about the cumulative progress made on hundreds of fronts over the past two to three years, especially in the low-profile field of refuse management. Or they will say that putting solutions in place, whether they are engineering or political, takes time and we should not expect fast results. But Hong Kong still looks, smells and sounds like a highly polluted city and will continue to do so for many years.
Progress has been made on some fronts. A ban on high-sulphur fuels in factories a year ago has resulted in significant reductions in levels of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere — up to 80% in some districts.
Short-term engineering works to improve water quality at Hong Kong’s popular southern beaches a few years ago has brought some of them back from the brink of closure. Noise controls implemented in late 1988 put harsher- restrictions on noisy forms of pile driving —though these are often ignored — while controls over construction noise are gradually being extended.
But from the public’s subjective point of view, there is little noticable improvement in water and noise pollution. Much of Hong Kong’s air pollution comes from vehicles. Floating refuse remains an almost insoluble problem at beaches and can make swimming an unpleasant experience and often a health hazard. Traffic noise can be deafening in some areas and is exacerbated by the poorly designed flyovers right outside residential and office buildings, with no noise barriers.
The other problem is that gains also seem to be followed by losses. On I April unleaded petrol was introduced, and priced cheaper than leaded to encourage people to switch. But soon afterwards, the government reneged on its long-term plan to reduce reliance on diesel vehicles. Although technically cleaner than petrol engines, diesel vehicles are not maintained or driven properly and cause more than 40% of Hong Kong’s fine dust problem and about 60% of its nitrogen dioxide, another cause of respiratory damage and a variety of other associated health problems.
There are also bureaucratic causes for the continuation of pollution problems — the relatively young EPD is not very popular within government and often does not get the cooperation it needs from other departments. Nor does it get enough staff and resources to implement its 10-year plan properly or enforce new laws adequately.
Every time a new piece of anti-pollution legislation is introduced into Hong Kong, the industrial lobby cries foul. Claims that it will drive up costs, make exports uncompetitive and have a far-reaching negative impact on the local economy are common. So too is the threat that factories might be forced to move to China. Evidence suggests, however, that local industry is much better able to absorb the increased costs of environmental regulation than it claims to be.
Industry was upset when the government announced it would ban the use of dirty, high sulphur fuel in factories from mid 1990 onwards — a plan which would cost them HK$500 million a year in bills for cleaner, low-sulphur fuel. Yet no one can point to any factory which has since gone bankrupt because of this tougher regulation. Textile factories now admit the severe oil price rises caused by the Gulf War had a much worse effect on business.
The Federation of Hong Kong Industries, a statutory body set up by the government to promote the manufacturing sector, published a survey last December on why companies were investing outside Hong Kong. Out of a representative sample of 411 manufacturers, none mentioned environmental regulations as a reason for moving part of their capital to Guang Dong or offshore to places such as the US, Canada, Singapore and Malaysia.
The main "push factors" sending companies overseas were, as was to be expected, labour shortage and soaring wages in Hong Kong. Next came skyrocketing rentals, followed by a small group worried about the 1997 reversion to Chinese sovereignty.
Malcolm Matthews, chairman of the Federation’s standing committee on pollution control, believes environmental regulations must, nevertheless, have some influence on the decision to leave Hong Kong because they do increase costs to some extent. But he could not put any figures on this and admits: "I have not heard anybody say that it was exclusively environmental legislation that made them move to China."
The Federation recently objected to a proposal from government to add a levy on the sale or import of chemicals in Hong Kong to pay for a new chemical waste treatment centre. Following the usual line of attack, its press release states the levy would "cause far-reaching disruptive impact on the local economy," and would "unfairly penalise those in the entrepot trade." It would also "pose adverse effects on the local economy by encouraging relocation of many manufacturing industries away from Hong Kong." As there are, again, no figures to back any of these assertions, one official see this as an initial negotiating ploy, rather than a genuine long-term position.
The Hong Kong Government is not autocratic and rarely tries to impose its will. Local factory owners, a tenacious lot, do not like being told the rules of the pollution game have changed after 40 years, and the government is usually willing to back down if the opposition is too strong.
In the early 1980s the effects of the new Water Pollution Control Ordinance were delayed for five years because of opposlti3n from industry representatives on the Legislative Council. The law was changed to allow polluting factories to increase their effluent volumes by 30% after their area came under control. Almost 10 years later the government again backed down over water pollution, this time a major amendment to the original Water Pollution Control Ordinance. In its original form the amendments said factories must treat all of their own waste in-house, a rule which the industry said was impossible-factories simply did not have the space to install all the treatment facilities required. A compromise was eventually reached where industry would pay government to treat the most problematic type of waste and do the rest itself.
This is not to say that some major efforts are made, but progress is slow. One major example being the notorious Tolo Harbour, containing some of Hong Kong’s most polluted water.
Although open to the sea, the harbour has no through current to flush out the pollution from surrounding factories, two major new towns, unsewered villages and pig farms. Despite a HK$1.4 billion action plan which started in 1988, all that has been achieved so far is that pollution has been arrested, but not reversed, and the water is still admitted to be a health hazard.
The EPD in an unusually frank statement, says it does not expect to reach its dean-up targets until the end of the decade. "This is a planning failure on a grand scale, and one the government must at all costs avoid repeating in the (new) port and airport plans."
-By Jamie Allen in Hongkong
Source : Far Eastern Economic Review, 19 Sept, 1991
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