GENERAL
INTRODUCTION
1.01. Hong Kong's rate of development continues to accelerate and if measured in terms of the costs of building and public works, the expansion for the year was 35% with a total expenditure of around $1,300 million. Of this total, $590 million was spent by the Public Works Department.
1.02. Measured in terms of the demand for water, the Colony's expansion is 13% per year compound and it was extremely unfortunate that, faced with this expanding demand, the Colony experienced the driest year on record. It is seldom that Hong Kong has too much water and rationing over most of the year by limiting the hours of supply has been necessary for as long as most people can remember. A 4-hour supply each day over the Winter of 1962 and the Spring of 1963 was not therefore unusual. There was, however, little rain during this period and by the end of April storage had dropped to 31 thousand million gallons and was falling at the rate of 2,000 million gallons a month. The supply period was reduced to 3 hours a day on the 2nd of May, 4 hours every two days on the 16th of May and, on the 1st of June when storage of water had dropped to one and three-quarter thousand million gallons, a ration of 4-hours every fourth day had to be introduced.
1.03. The emergency measures taken to obtain more water are described in detail later in this report and included additional pumping from the Indus River and the chartering of ocean-going tankers to pump up water from the Pearl River in China for transportation to Hong Kong. This necessitated the construction of tanker terminals for the ships and extensive discharge systems so that the water could be fed into the existing waterworks network for filtration. This importation of water continued non-stop throughout the year and avoided what could have been a disaster. Around 350 million gallons of water a month was brought in by these means which represented over one-third of the total water consumed and made it possible to maintain the Colony supply of 4 hours every fourth day uninterrupted during the full period under review. Expenditure by the department on the water emergency alone amounted to nearly $50 million.
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GENERAL
INTRODUCTION
1.01. Hong Kong's rate of development continues to accelerate and if measured in terms of the costs of building and public works, the expansion for the year was 35% with a total expenditure of around $1,300 million. Of this total, $590 million was spent by the Public Works Department.
1.02. Measured in terms of the demand for water, the Colony's expansion is 13% per year compound and it was extremely unfortunate that, faced with this expanding demand, the Colony experienced the driest year on record. It is seldom that Hong Kong has too much water and rationing over most of the year by limiting the hours of supply has been necessary for as long as most people can remember. A 4-hour supply each day over the Winter of 1962 and the Spring of 1963 was not therefore unusual. There was, however, little rain during this period and by the end of April storage had dropped to 31 thousand million gallons and was falling at the rate of 2,000 million gallons a month. The supply period was reduced to 3 hours a day on the 2nd of May, 4 hours every two days on the 16th of May and, on the 1st of June when storage of water had dropped to one and three-quarter thousand million gallons, a ration of 4-hours every fourth day had to be introduced.
1.03. The emergency measures taken to obtain more water are des- cribed in detail later in this report and included additional pumping from the Indus River and the chartering of ocean-going tankers to pump up water from the Pearl River in China for transportation to Hong Kong. This necessitated the construction of tanker terminals for the ships and extensive discharge systems so that the water could be fed into the existing waterworks network for filtration. This importation of water continued non-stop throughout the year and avoided what could have been a disaster. Around 350 million gallons of water a month was brought in by these means which represented over one- third of the total water consumed and made it possible to maintain the Colony supply of 4 hours every fourth day uninterrupted during the full period under review. Expenditure by the department on the water emergency alone amounted to nearly $50 million.
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