LAND, PUBLIC WORKS AND UTILITIES
The office also provides extensive cartographic services for many government departments. These include the production of geological maps, aeronautical charts, electoral boundary maps, as well as plans for land disposal and resumption, street and place names, government notices and legal purposes.
The Air Survey Unit takes aerial photographs regularly and upon request for photogrammetric survey and record purposes such as for flooding and landslip. The photographs, some in colour, are available for sale to the public.
Drainage Services
The Drainage Services Department is responsible for planning, designing, constructing, operating and maintaining the sewerage, sewage treatment and stormwater drainage infrastructures.
Treatment and Disposal of Waste Water
Waste water disposal projects being implemented by the department are broadly divided into two categories: 'Sewerage Master Plan (SMP) schemes' which are 16 territory-wide sewerage rehabilitation and improvement schemes; and the 'Strategic Sewage Disposal Scheme' which is a multi-billion-dollar project to collect and treat sewage discharges from the urban areas of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. The latter scheme was developed in 1989 under the new strategy to combat water pollution in Hong Kong.
Projects under these two categories, valued at some $7 billion, were under construction by the Drainage Services Department, and projects worth a further $9 billion were at various stages of planning and design in 1997.
On Hong Kong Island, work continued under the Central, Western and Wan Chai West SMP to lay 5.9 kilometres of trunk sewers and build new pumping stations and new screening facilities. Two works contracts for sewer laying and re-lining work under the Wan Chai East and North Point SMP will commence in 1998. As far as practical, trenchless construction methods were planned to minimise disruptions to traffic and inconvenience to the public.
On the other side of Victoria Harbour, sewerage improvement work under the East Kowloon SMP, the Tsuen Wan, Kwai Chung and Tsing Yi SMP and the North and South Kowloon SMP were progressing for completion in 1998. Construction of the remaining sewers under the West Kowloon SMP will start in 1998 while planning and design work was in hand for the Tseung Kwan O SMP.
In the New Territories, the initial phases of sewerage improvement work for the Port Shelter SMP and the laying of a 2.8-kilometre pressure sewer under the Yuen Long and Kam Tin SMPs were completed in 1997. Planning and design work was in progress for the remaining phases of these two SMPs. At Sham Tseng, reclamation for the construction of a sewage treatment works was completed in June 1997. The laying of associated public sewers along Castle Peak Road and construction of the sewage treatment works will start in 1998 and 1999 respectively.
Implementation of the $5.32 billion Strategic Sewage Disposal Scheme, Stage I, reached its final stage of completion apart from the sewage conveyance tunnels. The Stonecutters Island sewage treatment works — a key element of the scheme — was commissioned in May 1997. The plant, the world's largest chemically enhanced primary treatment plant, is capable of serving a projected population of 3.5 million
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