Shenzhen Plans World's Largest Incinerator

SCMP
Sep 15, 2011

Waste plan for Lantau waters

The Standard
Colleen Lee
Friday, February 18, 2011

The government prefers building an incinerator south of Lantau Island over another site in Tuen Mun, environmental minister Edward Yau Tang-wah said yesterday.


The Integrated Waste Management Facilities will involve the creation of an artificial island south of Shek Kwu Chau and west of Cheung Chau, sparking concerns from environmentalists it may affect the habitat of protected dolphins.

The facilities are expected to be completed in 2018 should the Legislative Council's finance committee approve the funding.

The government expects the incinerator will be able to treat about 3,000 tonnes of waste a day.

Secretary for the Environment Yau said the site was chosen over Tsang Tsui in Tuen Mun partly because of the shorter transportation time and the lower impact on the neighborhood.

The city's three refuse transfer stations are now located at Island West, Island East and West Kowloon. He described the route for shipping the waste from the stations to Shek Kwu Chau as "a much shorter one, at least one third or one quarter shorter than the journey taken to Tuen Mun."

There is only a drug rehab center on Shek Kwu Chau, which houses about 200 people.

Yau said the new facilities may also may help boost economic activities in the area.

The project will require the reclamation of 15.9 hectares for the facilities, a berthing area and a breakwater.

On worries about the environmental impact, Yau said an assessment report released yesterday showed the project is considered environmentally acceptable if mitigation measures are carried out.

The report said 31 hectares of habitat will be lost due to the reclamation and the creation of an embayment area within a breakwater.
 
The government consultancy proposes to set aside a marine park of about 700 hectares in the waters between the Soko Islands and Shek Kwu Chau as compensation.

WWF senior conservation officer Alan Leung Sze-lun said: "It is a very important habitat for the finless porpoise. The project has a direct impact on the species."

Leung and Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society chairman Samuel Hung Ka-yiu urged the government to set up the marine park as soon as possible.

Greenpeace campaigner Gloria Chang Wan-ki said she is worried about potential air pollution brought by the operation of the incinerator.

Cheung Chau residents are concerned about the fly ash and smell problems, Island district councilor Lee Kwai-chun said.

Choice of remote island for incinerator enrages critics

SCMP.com
Cheung Chi-fai
Feb 18, 2011

Environmental officials have picked a remote outlying island for a controversial mega-incinerator to dispose of Hong Kong's mounting waste.
But critics say building it there will cost more, take longer and cause more environmental damage than the other potential location.

In choosing Shek Kwu Chau, about six kilometres south of Lantau, officials passed over a more widely expected site at Tsang Tsui in Tuen Mun.
Critics immediately said the government wanted to avoid a bruising fight with residents who live in and round Tuen Mun and politicians who would strenuously object to an incinerator capable of burning 3,000 tonnes of waste a day in an area that already has a landfill.
As environment minister Edward Yau Tang-wah announced the long-awaited selection yesterday, an environmental impact assessment report was released for public consultation.
The selection process has been a flashpoint issue since the sites were shortlisted in 2008. Concerns were heightened when a plan to expand the Tseung Kwan O landfill was rejected by lawmakers last year.
The environmental impact report released yesterday did little to resolve the controversies, however. It refrains from saying if Shek Kwu Chau or Tsang Tsui is the more acceptable choice on environmental grounds.
 
It concludes that both sites comply with all environmental standards, leaving it largely for government officials to decide which to pick.
Yau said the island was favoured because it would create a more balanced distribution of waste facilities throughout the city. And because it is closer to existing refuse transfer facilities in the urban area, waste transport trips would be shorter.
"Shek Kwu Chau is further away from major population centres," Yau said, "so the accumulated environmental effect will be less."
 
Tsang Tsui, on the far western tip of the New Territories, is located next to the city's largest landfill and close to a power generation plant and transmission grid. It also has enough land for immediate construction of an incinerator by 2016. That will be badly needed to handle the city's mounting waste crisis, officials say, because all landfills will be full by 2018.
On the island, however, up to 16 hectares of land will have to be reclaimed from the sea for the construction. Because of that, the incinerator can only be completed two years later - in 2018.
In addition, extra power cables will have to be laid in the seabed between the island and Cheung Sha to transmit the electricity generated from the incineration process.
Officials refused to say how much more it would cost to build the incinerator on the island compared with Tsang Tsui.
 
In order to mitigate the harm to marine habitats, whose denizens include the protected finless porpoise, the government proposes setting up a 700-hectare marine park between the Soko Islands and Shek Kwu Chau.
Ng Cho-nam, a former environment adviser to the government, said the choice was clearly a political decision that spared officials from repeating the disruption to its plan to expand the Tseung Kwan O landfill last year. "They just want to avoid being defeated if they opt for the Tsang Tsui site," Ng said.
"But in doing so, they might have to sacrifice the integrity of the environmental impact assessment process."
Ng said it was apparent that the Tsang Tsui site was the more environmentally acceptable choice, as it would cause much less ecological damage, but for unknown reasons the impact study was unable even to tell which site was superior in technical terms.
 
Man Chi-sum, chief executive officer of Green Power, said the government had cleverly reserved the Tuen Mun site for the next round of incineration expansion.
"Officials have picked an easier one in the first place and if they succeed there they can move on to build another one in Tuen Mun," Man said. "But if they now go for the difficult one, they might end up having just one incinerator built."
 
Clive Noffke, from Green Lantau Association, said he very disappointed by the decision and suspected that politics was behind it.
"Tsang Tsui has land, power grid, places for ash disposal but no ecology. No doubt, it is an obvious choice."
Noffke said previous planning blueprints had long shown the South Lantau region as a conservation area; siting an incinerator there ran counter to that.
Chau Shue-ying, a Tuen Mun district councillor, welcomed the selection. "The waste problem is a responsibility for each district and everyone in Hong Kong," she said. But she was still worried that officials would pick Tuen Mun for a second incinerator.
Audrey Eu Yu-mee, a Civic Party lawmaker, also described the choice as heavily political.
"The government dares not build in Tuen Mun to avoid criticism," she said. "But this facility [on Shek Kwu Chau] is deemed to be insufficient to handle the waste generated by the city. So the government will still need to build one in Tuen Mun in the long term."
Waste produced in Hong Kong grew by 21 per cent, from 5.3 million tonnes in 2001 to 6.4 million tonnes in 2009.
 
On old European maps Shek Kwu Chau was known as Coffin Island. It was uninhabited until 1963, when it became a heroin treatment centre. It was used in the early 1990s as a temporary detention centre for Vietnamese boatpeople. It is still a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts.

Government ditches landfilll plan: HK scrambles to avert looming crisis on waste

SCMP
Jan 5, 2011

Legislators pursue debate on powers to change laws

SCMP
Jan 5, 2011