ENG-1990 — Page 25

SHAPING UP FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

In spite of all this road building, the study warns that there will have to be curbs on the rate of increase in the less efficient forms of transport – cars and small goods vehicles. No decision has been taken on the best way to do this. Charging for road use is an obvious option. Somehow a sensible way must be found to distribute this scarce resource in the same way that other scarce resources are distributed. In our economy this means charging a price. It is already done for tunnels and parking. Many places charge for using fast roads. The biggest obstacle is the clumsy way of collecting the payments and technology will overcome this problem before long.

For years we have taken our utilities electricity, gas, water and telephones - for granted. It was not always so. Only water is a utility operated by the goverment and the old timers will remember water shortages more vividly than difficulty with other utilities. Electricity and gas probably have the best performance, though the reluctance to provide rural electrification nearly led to the nationalisation of the electricity companies on the recommendation of a high powered commission. Fortunately their recommendations were set aside and we have never had to suffer brownouts or other rationing of electricity. Water was always scarce and supplies depended very heavily on the rain that fell each year. On two occasions the taps were turned off except for four hours once every four days. Lesser restrictions were common. It was supplies from China, and our increasing confidence in their reliability, that changed the picture. Now nobody even bothers to economise. In the plethora of communication facilities we are urged to buy today we forget that at one time you had to queue to get a phone at all. All these utilities have plans that take us far into the future and, in the light of past performance, we can expect to continue to take them for granted.

For too long we have put off measures to preserve and improve the environment. Clear Water Bay was once just that - where you could see your anchor on the bottom. Today you can barely see the keel of your boat. Tolo Harbour once had a fine and varied collection of coral round Centre Island and the shores of Plover Cove. Yet not all changes have been for the worse. When firewood and grass were the fuel for cooking, the hills were bare and a haze of smoke hung over the town at meal-time. Kerosene, electricity and gas have ended the demand for firewood. The villages in the more remote areas, where farmers burned the hills so that the ash would wash down and fertilise their fields, are now deserted and the scrub is turning into jungle.

Some significant steps are now being taken to reverse the damage done to the en- vironment. The greatest of these is a start on the collection and treatment of the sew- age of the millions who live round the harbour. This is now discharged straight into it. The sewage works have been started on Stonecutters Island and by the next decade will carry treated sewage way out into the China Sea. Air pollution has been dramatically cut by stopping the use of high-sulphur fuel and unleaded petrol is soon to be introduced. A plant is to be built to dispose of toxic wastes. Some progress is being made in cutting down noise. Getting rid of rubbish used to be done in the crudest way. My first encounter with this was a refuse dump in what is now Kwai Chung and was then an inlet called Gin Drinker's Bay. Here a wall had been built from the mainland to an island and town refuse was simply dumped from barges over the wall. It was the foulest place I have ever seen and men worked there day in day out. Today refuse is dumped at tips and covered up straightaway. Those smooth grassy slopes in Junk Bay are on top of the first properly managed dump.

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