Red flag raised over marine safety after Hong Kong’s third runway is built
Academic and former Observatory director Lam Chiu-ying says a confidential report has underestimated potential accidents in narrower waterways
A confidential consultant report assessing the risk of marine traffic accidents after a large area is reclaimed for the proposed third airport runway has underestimated the number and scale of potential accidents, says a veteran environmental scientist who has obtained the report.
Lam Chiu-ying, an adjunct professor in Chinese University’s department of geography and resource management, said the report, which estimated that the number of marine traffic accidents would increase by one per year after the reclamation, had failed to take into account the number of vessels sailing through Hong Kong waters. The document said there would be 37 accidents per year by 2030.
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Lam added that the report, in evaluating the risk on society as a whole, used much smaller per capita risk figures which indicated that they were acceptable. He said his own calculations showed the results were in fact unacceptable.
Furthermore, he said an oil rig belonging to the Shenzhen government was sited about 2km from the end of the third runway, which would affect flight landings there. He said the report reflected the problem, but the government was keeping this away from the public.
“I’m very disappointed,” said Lam, who is a former Observatory director.
“I’ve raised the mistakes several times with the government, but they brushed them aside as mere opinions instead of statements based on scientific grounds. If large-scale accidents happen after the reclamation, I wonder whether they can sleep well.”
The Airport Authority has commissioned two studies on the impact the reclamation – expected to be completed around 2023 – may have on nearby waters. Both reports, finished in March last year, have been kept confidential. Lam said he had seen only one of them.
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Lam filed his opposition to the HK$141.5 billion project in July last year during a public consultation exercise. The Lands Department is expected to submit all the opinions collected to the Executive Council later this month.
Lam said after the reclamation for the third runway, the width of Urmston Road, a major marine passage between Lantau and Tuen Mun, would shrink by half, while the number of vessels sailing through the area would grow, including ferries running between Hong Kong, Macau and the Pearl River Delta and heavy cargo ships.
This would make large-scale accidents such as collisions between passenger ferries and cargo ships highly likely, he said.
He also calculated societal risk levels based on the projected fatality-per-accident rates used by the report, and the results fell into the “unacceptable” level by standards set in the Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance.
A spokesman for the Airport Authority said it would not comment on Lam’s arguments as they were being processed. But he said the assessment report was conducted by marine experts who concluded that the third runway system would not cause any “unsolvable risks” or have any negative impact on future marine traffic activities.
