ENG-1995 — Page 441

THE ENVIRONMENT

discharging it into Victoria Harbour, which is much less sensitive to nutrient pollution.

Rural Areas and the Sea

Many waterways in the New Territories are still severely polluted and some streams are no better than open sewers. This pollution poses a serious health risk to the public when it passes through towns. With effective legislative controls, significant improvements in water quality have been achieved and maintained in some rivers such as the Mui Wo River and Tai Po Kau Stream.

Much of this pollution is caused by the territory's livestock industry. Before 1987, the total amount of waste produced annually by about 700 000 pigs and 12 million poultry was 840 000 tonnes. This was equivalent to the pollution load of the raw sewage from more than two million people. Most of it ended up in Hong Kong's small streams and rivers and eventually, the sea. By the end of 1995, this load had been reduced to about 20 000 tonnes through controls under the Waste Disposal Ordinance.

Bathing beaches are an important recreational resource. To safeguard the public against swimming in polluted waters, the EPD has adopted strict E. coli (a bacterium) standards for water quality control in bathing beaches. These standards relate to the degree of faecal pollution and were devised by the department after a very thorough study of the health risk facing local bathers. The following table shows how beaches were classified in 1994 and 1995.

Health risk cases per Number of beaches 1 000 swimmers

Annual

Bathing season geometric beach rank mean of E. coli count per

100mL of beach water

Good

up to 24

Fair

25 to 180

Poor

181 to 610

Very poor

More than 610

1994

1995

Undetectable

17

19

10 or less

23

18

11 to 15

13

14

More than 15

3

5

Beaches in the 'good' and 'fair' categories met the government's water quality objective for bathing.

Protecting the Environment

The Administrative Framework

370

The Planning, Environment and Lands Branch of the Government Secretariat has overall policy responsibility for the environment.

The EPD is the government's main store of expertise in pollution control and environmental management. Its tasks include: advising on policy; implementing anti- pollution programmes; environmental planning and assessment; devising, enforcing