IT is extraordinary that in a modern city like Hong Kong more than 400,000 people can be left without water supplies to their homes for the best part of a week. It should be unthinkable that they should have to queue, with buckets and bins, and pots and pans, to collect water from tankers. Yet this is the fate of the residents of Tuen Mun following the flooding of the New Territories last week by Severe Tropical Storm Ira.
Once the floodwaters built up, there was no stopping them inundating the Tuen Mun water treatment plant at Fu Tei, damaging both its electric and diesel-powered pumps - and leaving the residents without water for drinking, cooking or washing. The question the Government is asking in the wake of Ira is why has flooding become such a serious problem in the New Territories? It needs to find the answers quickly - and then act to overcome the problems.
Part of the problem may lie simply in the development of the New Territories townships. Concrete and asphalt do not absorb water. They cause it to run off and any town development requires efficient drainage systems to stop the run-off turning into torrents. It seems that in Tuen Mun the drainage system was blocked and the Secretary for Works, James Blake, already has promised that engineers will try to discover why drainage in Tuen Mun was blocked.
The Acting Governor, Sir David Ford, touched on a critical aspect of the problem when he blamed unauthorised changes of land use. He said a special task force would be set up to investigate illegal landfills.
Large tracts of New Territories paddy fields and fish ponds have been turned over to illegal dumps, mainly of old cars or shipping containers. The fields and ponds once absorbed and regulated the flow of water; the dumps add to the run-off problem.
No matter what the Government says about its attempts to control illegal land use in the New Territories, its best efforts so far are not good enough. The illegal dumps should be eradicated simply because they are eyesores but that does not seem to have provided sufficient motivation for the Government. Now that it seems they are contributing the flooding problem, causing damage, dislocation and extreme inconvenience, it may be that the Government will be stirred into taking tougher action.