A torrent of waste and worry

THERE is a blithe statement on the Water Supplies Department Web site. 'There is nothing to worry about' it says in response to concerns raised by the Legislative Council Public Accounts Committee about the standard of Hong Kong water. Consumers should be at ease, it says, because our tap water meets stringent World Health Organisation guidelines and is therefore safe to drink. You will not be sick if you drink it. But that may not be true in future. And the water that comes treated through our taps is also used, untreated, to irrigate vegetables in Guangdong which we eat in Hong Kong - so there is more to worry about than the chlorinated tap water we can drink. Before 1995, Hong Kong needed mainland water. But for the past five years Hong Kong has had enough rain to supply its needs. Yet it has had to continue buying river water from Guangdong which is dirtier than the rain and requires more cleaning to be pumped to our taps. To store this unneeded water, the import has to be pumped into the reservoirs, from where a mix of rain and import then gushes out into the sea. Buying this water has cost Hong Kong $1.7 billion it need not have spent, according to the Legco committee. That is about $250 for every person in the SAR. Few people deny that water is required from up north to ensure we have enough. But they worry about where we are getting it from and under what conditions. 'I for years have been wondering why the Hong Kong Government did not try to secure water rights from further inland, well inland of the industrial area,' says Bill Barron, associate professor of the Centre for Urban Planning and Environmental Management at the University of Hong Kong. It is common for urban areas to obtain supply over huge distances from clean sources, he says. 'Los Angeles gets water from hundreds of kilometres away - it has secured water rights permanently from mountains.' Yet whereas elsewhere the source of drinking water would be a matter of public debate, he says here he has found it such a sensitive topic that approaches to discuss it have been blocked by unwilling officials. Friends of the Earth deputy director Plato Yip Kwong-to says he also has been unable to obtain information. 'In my opinion, the Water Supplies Department is a black box operation. Nothing is transparent.' That black box has been partly opened by the Legco Public Accounts Committee, whose October report was discussed last week in the council with government officials who reluctantly agreed to look into changes. The report found that shortcomings in the water supply agreement with Guangdong mean: Hong Kong is bound to buy a fixed amount of water even when the reservoirs are already full. Since 1995 reservoirs have been overflowing, yet the SAR has paid $1.7 billion for Guangdong water that is then dumped in the sea. Water dumped has amounted to about a quarter of the amount in the reservoirs. This will continue until 2004 and perhaps 2008; Hong Kong must pay for the water even if it does not take it; the Guangdong authorities have retained a 1983 health standard for Hong Kong water despite the introduction of a more stringent standard in 1988 for other mainland water; even this outdated quality pledge has not been met and never will be; there is no penalty for breaking this quality standard; there is no statutory requirement in Hong Kong law that the water pouring through taps meets any quality standard. Consumers are only protected by a Water Supplies Department (WSD) undertaking to meet its own targets; more use of chlorine to bring the increasingly dirty water up to these targets means we are drinking more potentially cancerous by-products of the chemical process, though the quantity is still below the internationally recognised safety guideline. Secretary for Works Lee Shing-see has rejected the idea of any statutory requirements being added to the Waterworks Ordinance, saying it is 'more transparent' to publish pledged targets together with regular updates of cleanliness levels achieved. He told Legco it did not matter how dirty the incoming water was, as long as it was clean when it reached the consumer. But Dr Barron says this reliance on chemicals is dangerous and short-sighted because 'the more you have to clean it, the more chance there is of something getting through'. And, he says, since both the SAR and Guangdong governments agree that the water will deteriorate further and given the growing populations of both the SAR and Guangdong, 20 million of whom now rely on the water, how long will it be before there is a crisis? In the past the crises have been water shortages rather than gluts. Hong Kong has taken mainland water since before the 1949 revolution, yet as recently as 1982 a shortage led to rationing. Concern with ensuring a secure supply led Hong Kong to agree under the latest deal signed in 1989 - which covered supply from 1995 to 2008 - that purchases would increase by a fixed amount each year, according to its forecast of what it would need. But the forecast was wrong. The same 1990s evacuation of factories to the mainland that led to an overestimate in electricity demand similarly meant that growth in water usage was about half that expected by the Government. By 1992, with reasonable rainfall and the increasing water supply outstripping consumption, reservoirs regularly contained more than 70 per cent of their capacity, at which level overflow becomes likely when it rains. Even in 1992, the Government recognised this problem. The WSD forecast that supply would outstrip demand from 1993 onwards and said 'action should be taken to draw up a strategy to review in due course the water quantity to be supplied from Guangdong province'. It told the Executive Council that overflow from the reservoirs would be 'an expensive waste'. But fear that the worry could be premature meant Guangdong was not asked to reduce supply until 1995, after the first serious overflow from reservoirs in 1994, as shown in the graph above. Guangdong refused, on the basis that the supply system it had built (with an interest-free loan from Hong Kong) would only provide a reasonable return if the agreed amounts were pumped. Numerous later requests were similarly turned down. By 1997, Hong Kong was paying for water it did not take, saving about $30 million in electricity pumping costs - yet in 1998, despite a WSD estimate that there was a near-90 per cent chance of overflow from the Plover Cove and High Island reservoirs, the full amount of water was still taken from Guangdong. Only in April 1998, when Hong Kong again agreed an interest-free loan of $2.4 billion to build a closed aqueduct over the river to prevent some pollution getting in, did Guangdong agree to cut the yearly increase in supply. But the cut is still not enough. Last year the reservoirs were again 90 per cent full and until 2004 the committee estimates the extra water Hong Kong will have to buy will waste another $1.8 billion on top of the $1.7 billion it estimates to have been lost so far. Despite the committee having used the WSD's own estimation method which it quoted to Exco in 1995, the WSD rejects this loss figure. On a Web site section where it solicits public support for its views, the department says: 'Even in rainy seasons if we did not take any Dongjiang water, there would still be overflow of reservoirs . . . therefore we have not lost $1.7 billion over 11 years.' In fact, it claims, incorporating flexibility into the agreement could have pushed the price up so much that the WSD has saved money. Legislators accused the Government of being passive in the negotiations. Frontier member Emily Lau Wai-hing told officials: 'We worry that they have a bigger mouth than you do.' The agreed quality standard gives that impression. The Guangdong authorities said in 1989 that it would follow the 1983 standard because the tighter national target set a year before had not yet been adopted by the province. Yet during the 1998 loan agreement, no change was made - and though the authorities agreed to 'take remedial action' when the water was not up to scratch, if Hong Kong took less water at some time in a year because the quality was poor, it would have to make up the difference by the end of the year. Yet the water has not met either standard fully since 1989. By 1998, when increasing pollution was at its worst, the water contained hardly any dissolved oxygen, meaning bugs can easily grow, while levels of phosphorus and nitrogen, which typically come from fertilisers, detergents, sewage or industrial waste, broke the requirements in two-thirds and all cases respectively. Some samples contained five times as much nitrogen as allowed. 'They missed their chance in 1998,' says FoE's Mr Yip. 'This is ridiculous when Hong Kong is trying to project an image as a world-class city.' Even the Secretary for Justice in 1997 said a clause regarding resolution of disputes should be included in the renegotiated 1998 agreement - yet none was. WSD assistant director for water supply and distribution, Damien Ku Chi-chung, protests that the Guangdong authorities have done and are doing a lot to improve things, such as building sewage works and a cleaning plant in Shenzhen in 1998: 'It's the largest in the world - no-one has ever done that before and they have succeeded . . . they built a pumping station in 18 months, it's quite incredible. 'The Guangdong government is taking a very serious attitude towards environmental protection . . . During the public accounts committee meeting, people laughed as if they thought 'do you really believe it?' but I believe it because I've seen it.' Asked his reaction to allegations that the Government was too afraid of upsetting mainland authorities, he said the atmosphere had always been 'co-operative'. Despite Guangdong's refusal to cut supply because that would reduce its return on its investment, he says: 'This is not a commercial deal. This is not a commodity that if it doesn't meet the standard you reject it. According to the agreement we will sit together and discuss how to resolve it, there's no way we can reject it. 'There's no way to make it meet the standard despite all the effort . . . It doesn't meet the standard but it's acceptable.' Even though the Works Bureau and the WSD have agreed to set up an advisory body of academics, green groups and industry representatives to consider alternative water sources, the WSD Web site says 'we have no other economic alternative'. BUT even the Guangdong authorities do not seem to agree with this. Mr Yip says he was startled to have a senior environmental official tell him, during a high-level Guangdong National People's Congress meeting, that Hong Kong should consider other water sources, such as the West River. 'It was out of the blue. They said they can do nothing about [the pollution], they can't control it and 'why don't you think about other sources?' ' He welcomes the Works Bureau's statement that it would consider building more Hong Kong reservoirs so that the SAR does not depend on Guangdong alone. Currently 83 per cent of our water comes over the border. Democratic Association for the Betterment of Hong Kong member Lau Kong-wah says more reservoirs can never supply Hong Kong's entire needs, but he agrees that more must be done.