XN000022-1995-11-14 — Page 7

6.

Environmental infrastructure and legislation put in place

The Government has put in place, over the past 15 years, a comprehensive programme of environmental infrastructure and legislation to control air and water pollution, noise and hazardous wastes, the Director of Environmental Protection, Dr Stuart Reed, said today (Tuesday).

Addressing the Rotary Club of Peninsula on "Pollution Prevention and Control in Hong Kong", Dr Reed said, "all these programmes are now very definitely beginning to show results."

Cited as examples are the waste disposal strategy, which comprises three very large landfills and a network of refuse transfer stations, to meet Hong Kong's disposal need for solid wastes for the next 15 to 20 years, and the sewage programme to reduce pollution discharged to our streams and to the sea.

"The organic pollution load on Tolo Harbour has already been cut by nearly 60 per cent and looking only 18 months or so ahead, there is the firm prospect of a massive decrease in the pollution load on Victoria Harbour, as a result of the completion of new sewerage work in the area around the harbour and the commissioning of the Stonecutters Island treatment works in 1997," Dr Reed said.

Another programme that has helped protect the harbour is the chemical waste control scheme, which has reduced toxic metal flows to the harbour by almost three tonnes each day.

Much had also been done on the air and noise pollution front, but Dr Reed stressed that there were still some very important gaps to be filled in the overall strategy for pollution control in Hong Kong, in particular, on the control of air polluting emissions from road vehicles.

One of the ways the Government had proposed to tackle vehicle emissions, he said, was that all new road vehicles weighing less than four tonnes should be powered by petrol engines and fitted with three-way catalytic converters.

"If we are able to move forward on the proposals for diesel to petrol and one or two other new programmes we have in the pipeline, then these together with existing pollution control legislation, and the many environmental infrastructure projects that are being implemented, should mean that we have a reasonable grip on pollution that is generated within Hong Kong, and this should provide a degree of comfort," Dr Reed said.