While we must wait to see if the government will challenge the High Court decision on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, there are other issues worthy of reflection. The Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance was crafted to balance environmental protection and development needs. Its purpose is to ensure that potential environmental problems relating to a project are foreseen and avoided. It can also help identify alternative designs to avoid or minimise negative environmental impact and outline ways to improve environmental performance.
The practical difficulty for officials is how to deal with politically motivated projects. In the case of the bridge, one must assume that those responsible for environmental protection should want to conduct the most comprehensive assessment they can and find ways to mitigate problems.
The ordinance allows them to prepare technical memorandums and study briefs for projects. In the case of the bridge, the Environment Bureau and the Environmental Protection Department provided these as terms of reference for the Highways Department which then hired consultants to carry out the impact assessments. Environmental officials may then approve or reject their reports.
Therefore, environmental officials have the opportunity to ensure comprehensive assessments are done. They also have the chance to collect public views as these reports have to be made available for public comment, as well as provided to the consultative Advisory Council on the Environment.
The bridge's judicial review throws up questions about whether the responsible officials had done this as well as they could. The dispute was over whether the director of environmental protection had properly discharged her statutory duty in issuing permits to the Highways Department for work to begin, specifically with relation to assessing air quality and impact on health.
The court ruled there was an absence of substantial analysis on these areas and the director should not have issued the permits.