ENG-2011 — Page 341

The Environment 1 297

environment. The average bill for domestic accounts will rise from the 2007 level of $11 per month to $27 per month over a period of 10 years.

Livestock Waste Pollution

The Waste Disposal Ordinance bans the keeping of livestock in new towns and environmentally sensitive areas. Where they are allowed, livestock farms must have. proper waste treatment systems. The Government provides a free livestock waste collection service which collected about 22 300 tonnes of waste during the year.

From a public health and environmental protection standpoint, livestock farming in urbanised Hong Kong is not sustainable in the long term. To address the problem, the Government has introduced licence-surrender schemes to encourage poultry and pig farmers to cease permanently the keeping of poultry and pigs. Livestock farmers. are given ex gratia payments and the schemes are entirely voluntary.

The poultry and pig schemes were introduced in 2005 and 2006 respectively and farmers had up to one year to decide whether or not to join them. The two schemes have decreased effectively the number of pig and poultry farms and reduced the pollution load on the environment. Through the buyout scheme launched in 2008 for the live poultry trade, the number of poultry farms has been further reduced.

Bathing Beaches

The Government has adopted strict standards for water quality control to protect the health of swimmers at bathing beaches. These standards indicate the pollution level measured in terms of E. coli (the bacterium that can indicate the presence of sewage). The following table shows how beaches were classified in 2011. Beaches in the 'good' and 'fair' categories meet the Government's water quality objective for bathing. In 2011, all bathing beaches met the water quality objective.

Beach water

quality ranking E. coli count per 100ml

Bathing season geometric mean of

Minor health risk

cases per 1 000 swimmers

Number of beaches

in 2011

of beach water

Good

Up to 24

Undetectable

31

Fair

25 to 180

10 or less

10

181 to 610

11 to 15

0

More than 610

More than 15

O

Poor

Very Poor

In addition, beach water quality gradings to denote the recent water quality of open beaches are available on the EPD's website and hotline as well as through the weekly press releases.