ENG-1980 — Page 22

REVIEW

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No more vivid example of the way Hong Kong learned to devise its own solutions can be found than in the way it tackled its water supply problems. From the earliest times, Hong Kong has experienced water shortages, sometimes prolonged and severe, as in 1929, but persisting into the 1960s and 1970s. Twice in the post-war years water had to be rationed to one period of four hours every four days. Today, it enjoys unlimited supplies. This has been achieved as much by its own efforts by erecting the world's largest water desalting plant and building two ingenious storage reservoirs as by the help of the Guangdong (Kwangtung) water authorities.

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When the Hong Kong Government completed its two major post-war reservoirs, Tai Lam Chung on the mainland of the New Territories, and Shek Pik on the island of Lantau, there were no other natural valleys which could be earmarked for storage of water. Con- sultants and engineers at the PWD turned their attention to the coastal areas and picked two locations for development. One was Plover Cove in Tolo Harbour, which was blocked- off, drained, plugged and refilled with rain water from the nearby Pat Sin mountain range. The other was an even more imaginative project. On Hong Kong's northwest coast is the precipitous High Island, separated from the mainland by a narrow strait. By throwing out walls linking the steep-sided island to the equally steep-sided mainland, the engineers created a major storage area.

But even these efforts to assuage Hong Kong's ever-increasing thirst would have been inadequate without the help of the Guangdong water authorities which are now supplying more than a third of our total consumption with a willingness to supply more as their

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own capabilities permit and as Hong Kong's needs grow. Hong Kong has in turn provided advance payment for future water supplies in order to help finance the massive investment in new pumping facilities which will be needed in Guangdong.

Equally serious difficulties confronted Hong Kong in the realm of traffic and public transport and a major road-building programme was launched involving the construction of flyovers, double-deck highways and tunnels. And though this added several kilometres of road and led to the construction by the private sector of the widely-appreciated and well-used tunnel across the harbour, the growth of traffic largely negated the improvements. At the end of the decade, road congestion, particularly at rush hours, was more serious than at any time in Hong Kong's history. There are now an estimated 230 vehicles for every kilometre of road a figure exceeded only by the principality of Monaco.

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In a major effort to resolve this problem as much for individual convenience as for economic necessity - the government decided early in the 1970s to go in for a mass transit rail system and, in 1975, set up an independent corporation to build and operate a 15- kilometre system which came fully into operation early in 1980. Because it operates under- ground and overhead, along Hong Kong's and Kowloon's most heavily populated areas, it offers an alternative public transport system to buses and trams and to that extent serves to reduce pressure on the roads, though so far there is little evidence of it. The modified initial system of the Mass Transit Railway is, however, being extended (initially to Tsuen Wan in 1982, and along the northern shore of Hong Kong Island by the end of 1986), while at the same time the government and the public transport companies are working to im- prove the movement of buses, trams and ferries to cope with demand for faster and more efficient services. Substantial orders for new buses have been placed by all three private enterprise bus companies, higher fares are in the offing (as much because of higher oil prices as to finance the new bus fleets), and there are to be increasing restrictions on private motorists and other road-users. At the same time, the road network in the New Territories, in the urban areas of Kowloon and along the waterfront of Hong Kong Island is to be