Official inaction on effluent leak riles lawmakers

Environment officials have come under fire for not launching their own probe into the cause of an effluent leak from the Ta Kwu Ling landfill, as lawmakers vowed they would continue to seek the truth about what officials described as an accident.

More than 50 days after the leak, officials were still unable to determine how a 0.9 square metre hole was torn in the impermeable layer of a temporary effluent lagoon at the dump.

At a special meeting of the Legislative Council environment affairs panel yesterday, officials said the dump's operator, which faces prosecution for water pollution, was obliged to submit a report on the incident by the end of this month.

"It is like a probe by someone who is the target of a probe. How could you guarantee the probe's result is trustworthy? Why doesn't the government launch its own investigation?" asked Civic Party lawmaker Ronny Tong Ka-wah.

The leak was first spotted on July 27 but made public only on August 28. An unknown volume of polluted water ran into the Kong Yiu channel, from which some farmers had been drawing irrigation water.

It also emerged yesterday that two more water samples, taken on August 30 and September 2, contained pollutants exceeding legal limits, in addition to a sample taken on August 7.

Officials said the pollutants were residue from a previous leak rather than a new one.