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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT
mid-levels of various hillsides, intercepting streams and water courses, and conveying their water into the various storage reservoirs.
About one-quarter of the Island's consumption has to be met from New Territories reservoirs. This water is conveyed across the harbour in two 21" diameter concrete-lined steel submarine pipes. On account of the hilly nature of the Island a large proportion of the water has to be pumped, and in some areas re-pumped, necessitating numerous pumping stations and service reservoirs. The water supply to the Island and the urban area of Kowloon is filtered and sterilized by chemical treatment, and a high standard of purity is main- tained. Practically all the water is supplied to consumers through meters, the charge being based on the total cost of provision, including capital cost.
In addition to the severe restrictions on supply during the dry months, the inadequacy of existing resources involves a certain amount of restriction even during the wet season. The eight-month period from the end of August 1955 to the end of April 1956 was one of the driest on record and in consequence, the hours of supply, which had been restricted to 2 a day since November 1955, the shortest period ever recorded, had to be further restricted on the 1st May, 1956, to 3 hours every other day. The arrival of rain, however, made it possible to revert to 2 hours a day on 20th May and to increase supply to 7 hours a day on 18th June. The long dry winter was followed by far less than average rain- fall during the summer and although the hours of supply were reduced from 7 to 5 on 19th July, the reservoirs only reached 85 per cent of their capacity and for the first time on record no single reservoir overflowed to waste. Two emergency schemes, one to pump water into Jubilee Reservoir from two streams at Tai Po and the other to pump water into Kowloon Reservoir from the Shing Mun River at Sha Tin, were inaugurated early in the year to relieve the situation, and since they were brought into operation have added