Greens consider challenge to express rail link
The environmental impact report on the planned cross-border express rail link won preliminary approval yesterday but could still face delays with green groups now considering whether they have grounds to challenge it in court.
Green activist and environmental academic Man Si-wai said the groups believed the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link could have lasting ecological effects that its operator, the MTR Corp, had deliberately ignored in the report.
Mr Man said activists were seeking legal advice on whether there were grounds for a judicial review.
Passing the report at a closed session yesterday, a subcommittee of the Advisory Council on the Environment imposed a condition that the MTR Corp submit a contingency plan in case the project caused underground water losses, a person who was at the meeting said.
The source said the plan was not difficult to compile and the MTR would probably be able to finish it before the full council discussed the report next month - causing no delays to the work, which is expected to begin by the end of the year.
But Mr Man and other activists want the MTR to make a further assessment of the impact of the project - much of which is underground - on hydrogeology, or the movement of subterranean water.
During an open session at yesterday's meeting, several council members asked the MTR why there had been no evaluation of the impact of potential underground water seepage and how to remedy it. 'We have no contingency plan for something that amounts to an impossibility,' Alan Morris, tunnel construction manager for the project, said.
He said seepage into the tunnel was next to impossible not only because the 26 kilometre tunnel was a closed system, but also because it was 20 metres below ground.
'If that could happen it would have happened already,' Mr Morris said, referring to the many tunnels built by the MTR.
The subcommittee also called on the MTR to plant more trees than the 5,500 it would fell for the project, recycle all 10 million cubic metres of waste the project would generate, and ensure none of it was illegally dumped.
The full council may add other recommendations at its meeting next month.
Suggestions will got to the director of environmental protection, who will decide if a work permit should be granted.
Must go somewhere
There are environmental concerns over the project
The HK part of the project is expected to generate waste, in cubic metres, estimated at: 10m
