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PUBLIC WORKS AND UTILITIES
Eight miles of twin 30-inch submarine pipeline will carry the water from Silver Mine Bay to Hong Kong Island. Messrs Binnie and Partners are consulting engineers for all of the scheme between the reservoir intakes and the Hong Kong end of the submarine pipeline, while the catchwater channels and all works on Hong Kong Island are supervised by the Hong Kong Water Authority.
Some 20,000 feet of catchwater channels together with the impervious grout curtain under the main dam structure, the valve tower, the driving of supply tunnels to the pump house and treat- ment works, and the submarine pipeline to Hong Kong Island were completed. By the end of the year the main dam was 120 feet above the valley floor and both the pump house and treatment works were well advanced. On Hong Kong Island a pump house near the submarine pipeline terminal and a 30 million gallon reception reservoir on Mount Davis, together with a service reservoir overlooking Kennedy Town, and the trunk mains, were under construction.
Concurrently with the Shek Pik scheme work started on stage one of the Plover Cove Scheme in which stream courses round the head of Tolo Harbour will be tapped. In some cases the streams will drop down shafts 300 feet deep to a main collecting tunnel which will carry the water to a balancing reservoir of 900 million gallons capacity being constructed below the Shing Mun Reservoir. From there the water will gravitate to the Sha Tin treatment works which will have a capacity of 80 million gallons a day. The treated water will then be pumped up to the tunnel now being driven through Lion Rock and mains under the roadway in the tunnel will carry it to service reservoirs above Kowloon. Stage one of the scheme will also provide an alternative route by which water received from the Chinese reservoir at Sham Chun can be brought in for treatment and delivery to Hong Kong's urban areas. A main collecting tunnel being built as part of stage one will have diameters of between 20 and 30 feet, and a length of approximately 12 miles. By the end of the year stage one was well under way with the construction of a pump house and intake at Tai Po Tau, a section of the main collecting tunnel and shafts, the Lower Shing Mun dam, the Sha Tin treatment works, the Lion Rock Tunnel, and service reservoirs on the southern slopes of the Kowloon Hills.