M 25
During 1937 consumption on the Island varied between twelve and nineteen million gallons per day and on the mainland between seven and a half and twelve million gallons per day.
Until last year periodical restriction of the supply was an annual occurrence particularly on the Island, but as storage was then practically doubled by the completion of the Jubilee Reservoir, this unsatisfactory state of affairs is not so likely to happen in future, always provided funds for necessary extensions are forthcoming. Consumers are supplied generally through metered house services of which there are about 24,000; although public stand pipes are provided for those who are unwilling to pay for water by meter.
Present charges for water are as follows:-
Two per centum on assessed value of premises;
fifty cents per 1,000 gallons (less fifteen per centum for prompt payment) for consumption in excess of a statutory free allowance based on the two per centum rate;
one dollar per 1,000 gallons is charged for shipping and construction supplies, and
thirty-five cents per 1,000 gallons for unfiltered supplies.
A new Waterworks Ordinance involving revised charges for water is at present under consideration.
The average consumption per head per day amounts to about thirty-two gallons.
It is hoped that funds will be available shortly to enable Albany Service Reservoir to be covered and the unfiltered and unchlorinated water in the Pokfulam area to be adequately dealt with. Recommendations for the covering of the Albany Reservoir were put forward by the late Professor Sir William Simpson sent out to this Colony by the Secretary of State thirty-six years ago.
Although only just over one per centum of the Government pipe-borne water now remains untreated, it is unwise that even this relatively small proportion should serve as a potential source of water-borne disease in a country subjected to periodical invasion by cholera and where large reservoirs of typhoid and dysentery are constantly at hand.
Note.--One Hong Kong dollar of one hundred cents varies in exchange value
but is often worth about one shilling and three pence.