I refer to the letter from Cheng Luk-ki of Friends of the Earth (FoE) headlined, 'Route Three built at countryside's expense' (South China Morning Post, July 21). I was surprised that a leading green group which has actively participated in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process in Hong Kong harboured such misconceptions.
All EIAs, including the one for Route 3 Country Park Section, are put to the Advisory Council on the Environment (ACE) for review and selection for presentation. This provides independent scrutiny on all EIAs to ensure that they are properly carried out. FoE and other major green groups are represented on the ACE.
A detailed EIA could not be carried out before the (design-build) contract was let. However, in order to ensure the overall feasibility of the project, a preliminary EIA was carried out and the findings were included in the contract documents to form the basis of the detailed EIA. This preliminary EIA was endorsed by the ACE in July 1994. Detailed EIA studies were conducted by the successful tenderers and presented to the ACE in 1995.
The environmental performance of Route 3 Country Park Section during construction was tracked by an Environmental Monitoring and Audit (EM and A) programme, which was designed to identify early signs of problems through setting different warning levels.
When any of the warning levels was exceeded, both the contractor and its environmental team were required to take action and the franchisee's independent checker had to check that such action was effective.
There were problems during the initial stage of the contract and six prosecutions were initiated by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) against the contractors, but the situation soon improved. The situation was more or less under control during the rest of the construction period.
