Environmental report key to future of third runway at Hong Kong airport
Public must accept assessment on airport expansion, which green groups say will harm marine environment
The fate of Hong Kong's costliest infrastructure project - a third airport runway - hinges on how well the public accepts the results of an environmental impact assessment (EIA) unveiled yesterday.
Adding another runway would boost the capacity of the airport by about 44 per cent by 2023 to meet expected growth in air traffic. The existing two runways are forecast to reach capacity in 2019, according to the Airport Authority.
But environmentalists worry the project, the city's biggest since the construction of the airport in the mid-1990s, could spell disaster for the area's marine ecology because 672 hectares of seabed will be reclaimed.
They say endangered Chinese white dolphins living in or using the affected habitats off Lantau will be threatened, despite a pledge by the Airport Authority to expand a marine park when work is complete.
The authority's chairman, Vincent Lo Hong-sui, called the results of the two-year EIA study, which is now subject to public consultation, the "most comprehensive" ever conducted in Hong Kong.
"Hong Kong International Airport is strategically important to sustaining the [the city's] development and economy," he said. "This is why we are doing everything practicable to address the likely environmental impacts."
No one from the authority had anything to say yesterday about the final price tag for the project, which was initially estimated at HK$136 billion but is expected to be tens of billions of dollars higher.