Reply To: Pui O on Lantau suffering Death by a Thousand Cuts

6 June 2016 at 12:56 am #8902
DocMartin Williams

    Helping show the damage and threats to Pui O are far from new, this is from a 2007 email by Professor Paul Harris [there’s surely earlier material, just not readily found online right now]

    I am writing to express my concerns about the Revised Concept Plan for
    Lantau. I am concerned about the plan itself, and I am very concerned
    that HKSAR Government departments are already allowing the aims of the
    plan to be undermined by ongoing and planned development and
    construction on southern Lantau Island. Indeed, the concepts underlying
    the plan are already being violated in countless ways. Let me provide
    just a few contemporaneous examples.
    CB(1)1790/06-07(03)

     

     

    During in the last fortnight alone, the so-called ‘Coastal Protection
    Area’ for Pui O identified in the plan and specifically a designated
    grove of mangrove trees in a tidal zone adjacent to Ham Tin Village are
    being reclaimed at a rapid pace, mostly with building rubble and
    rubbish, some of it clearly toxic as indicated by container labels.
    (This reclamation has speeded up since a photo of the damage appeared
    in the South China Morning Post a few weeks ago.) What is more, this
    reclaimed land is being used to construct a large new multi-unit
    village house. Any casual observe visiting Ham Tin can see the
    destruction of wetland.