UK firm led to re-think over sewage
HEAVYWEIGHT lobbying by Trafalgar House, the British construction giant, was behind legislators' decision to get the Government to review its strategic sewage disposal scheme.
The firm, part-owned by Hongkong Land, wrote to every Legislative Councillor telling them a biological sewage treatment process would be more efficient than the lime treatment adopted.
Trafalgar House is one of the few companies worldwide that has a proprietary licence for one such process. By making a pre-emptive proposal the company hopes to be in a better position to win any contract.
But government officials fear that making such a change to the scheme, may result in it being scrapped.
Trafalgar brought over at least one expert, Gerry Quickenden, to answer any questions Legco members had about its proposal.
Mr Quickenden confirmed Trafalgar House had written to legislators, but when pressed for more information, he said: ''I am not authorised to talk about it.'' Mr Quickenden's visit coincided with the Government's request at the end of January for $6.8 billion to pay for the first stage of the scheme and agreement to set up a sewage charge trading fund to help pay the operating costs of the project.
The initial request was thrown out by Legco's finance committee but was approved on February 4 after Secretary for Works, James Blake, gave an assurance the Government would consider biological sewage treatment instead of lime treatment.
Environmental Protection Department (EPD) officials believe there is not enough time under the construction schedule to incorporate wholesale alterations into the first stage and still complete the scheme before June 30, 1997.
Talks would therefore have to take place with the Joint Liaison Group to get Chinese approval before work on the first phase could start. Taking the continuing dispute over container terminal nine as an example, officials believe the scheme could be delayed indefinitely.
According to a briefing paper prepared by the EPD, the one advantage the Trafalgar House scheme has is that it will remove up to 70 per cent of the harmful nutrients in the sewage sludge.
Lime treatment, which uses lime and other chemicals to kill off bacteria, only removes a very small amount of the nutrients.
If the Trafalgar House scheme was adopted, the cost of the first stage of the scheme would soar. Trafalgar House admits its proposal would cost $9 billion compared with the $5.32 billion the EPD has budgeted for its own scheme.
