REVIEW
27
At the border between the Colony and China, Hong Kong will, in due course, lay the pipes under the Sham Chun river to connect with the Chinese pipeline. But in fact water from China, discharged from the reservoir into the Sham Chun stream, is already being pumped into the new pipeline and has been flowing into the Colony since early December 1960. There are now pumps on the river Indus also, about a mile short of the frontier, and from the combined sources 1,204 million gallons of water (353 million being from Sham Chun) went into the Tai Lam reservoir between early October and the end of the year. This is a valuable addition to the Colony's resources and enabled the Waterworks to maintain exceptionally long hours of supply during the closing months of the year. There was some criticism that the Indus had not been tapped earlier, but the fact is that, without the supplies from Sham Chun, it would not have been economically worth while to do so, for the Indus water is normally only available in appreci- able quantities during the rainy season when it is least required. It was fortunate that unusually heavy rain fell in November.
On the eastern side of the New Territories two large irregular promontories jut out into Mirs Bay, divided by the long arm of Tolo Channel. Both promontories have an irregular indented coast- line with many islands clustering about and the whole terrain is mountainous and remote. Nevertheless, it attracted the attention of those concerned with the Colony's water supply. On the north shore of Tolo Harbour, there' is a large sea loch which is almost land-locked at its eastern end. Again, on the western shore of Port Shelter, a little south of Sai Kung, there is another bay called Hebe Haven with only one narrow entrance. The engineers con- ceived the idea of damming these inlets, pumping out the sea water and filling them with fresh water to add to the Colóny's supplies. Before the war this would have remained a pipe dream, for it would have been impossible in these conditions to secure the foundations of a dam on rock and no other method had been developed of making such a structure watertight. Today the science of soil mechanics has radically altered conceptions of dam con- struction, and this science, which has made possible a dam at Shek Pik, has also brought reservoirs at Plover Cove and Hebe