ENG-2013 — Page 301

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The Environment

sewerage for rural villages. The Water Pollution Control (Sewerage) Regulation empowers the EPD to direct house owners to connect their waste water pipes to new public sewers and since the regulation came into force in 1995, about 7,400 village houses have made connections to the public sewers.

Sewage Charges

All water users who discharge their sewage into public sewers have to pay a basic sewage charge in accordance with the Sewage Services Ordinance. Also, 27 trades and industries whose effluent strength exceeds that of domestic sewage have to pay a trade effluent surcharge reflecting the additional cost of treating their stronger effluent. These charges are used to recover the operation and maintenance costs of sewage collection, treatment, and disposal facilities, while the government provides funds for construction.

In support of the polluter-pays principle, since 2007 the government has initiated a gradual increase in the sewage charges for handling domestic waste water over a 10-year time frame. 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 21,500 tonnes of waste in 2013.

From the environmental protection perspective, livestock farming in urbanised Hong Kong is not sustainable in the long term. To address the problem, the Government introduced voluntary licence-surrender schemes in 2005 and 2006 to encourage respectively poultry and pig farmers to cease livestock farming permanently, in return for ex gratia payments. The schemes have decreased the number of pig and poultry farms and reduced the pollution load on the environment. The number of poultry farms has been further reduced by a buyout scheme launched in 2008.

Bathing Beaches

To protect the health of swimmers at bathing beaches, the government adopts strict standards for water quality control which indicate the pollution level measured in terms of Escherichia coli (the bacterium that can indicate the presence of sewage). Beaches in the 'good' and 'fair' categories in the following table meet the government's water quality objective for bathing, and all did in 2013.

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