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Letter to the Editor of the South China Morning Post published on 18 October, 2002 - Proud of anti-pollution track record
I write in response to your reader's letter headlined "More must be done" (SCMP, 3 October 2002). I appreciate your reader's concern about air and water pollution, and the proposed improvement measures.
Over the years, we have implemented many programmes to tackle air and water pollution problems.
Air pollution has been a persistent problem. Pollution from industry used to be the main concern in the 1970s and 1980s. Harmful emissions of sulphur dioxide were released from industrial factories which used high-sulphur industrial fuels.
In the late 1980s, the Government decided to ban the use of high-sulphur fuels, and since then the sulphur dioxide levels have been reduced and maintained at levels well below the Air Quality Objective target values. Our department has also maintained a vigilant control programme on industrial emission through licensing and inspection, and has achieved 80% reduction of air pollution from industrial sources.
We have also made considerable efforts to deal with vehicle smoke. Leaded petrol has already been banned in Hong Kong since April 1999. All newly registered petrol cars have to run on unleaded petrol and provided with advanced catalytic converters to reduce their emissions. In addition, 90% of the taxi fleets use LPG , which is a cleaner fuel; and 80% of the remaining old diesel light vehicles have been installed with particulate removal devices. These measures together with others have brought about improvement of the roadside air quality with the major pollutants reduced by 8 to 11%. The number of smoky vehicles has also been reduced by 50%.
Turning to the water pollution side, the implementation of the Water Pollution Control legislation and the chemical waste control has brought about significant improvement, and the quantities of toxic metals discharged to the Victoria Harbour from our industrial activities have significantly dropped by 90% in recent years.
The implementation of the sewerage programmes is also in full swing to cater for the present and future development needs of Hong Kong. With the commissioning of Stage 1 of the Harbour Area Treatment Scheme, 70% of the sewage flows around the old urban areas have been intercepted for proper treatment at Stonecutters Island. This scheme alone has successfully removed 50% of the pollution that was previously going into the harbour.
Our department has established a number of sampling stations to monitor the water quality of the 35 river systems. The monitoring results indicate that the river water quality has significantly improved since mid 80s. The water quality at 74% of the monitoring stations has attained good or excellent level in 2000 as compared to only 27% of the stations in 1988.
I have summarized the improvement we have achieved so far in dealing with air and water pollution, and I hope that this could help to correct some misconception of your reader as set out in her letter.
The Government is committed to make continuous efforts in improving our air and water environment. The future challenges we have to address are the regional air and water pollution; as well as the cleaning up of the Victoria Harbour, which still receives untreated sewage representing 30% of the total volume.
Patrick Lei
for Director of Environmental Protection
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