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SCMP Reporter

The ripping of  turf from a private slope behind No 3 Old Peak Road  and its replacement with shotcrete  - concrete sprayed on slopes to prevent landslides - has  infuriated the Lung Fu Shan Environmental Concern Group.   
Melanie  Moore, a group member, said she complained to the Buildings Department,   demanding that it stop the process, which, she discovered, had not been sanctioned by the authorities.
But Ms Moore was disappointed when told that the department would not require the property owners to restore the slope, as it considered enforcement action 'not appropriate'.
'The removal may render the subject slope liable to  become dangerous,' the department told her.
Ms Moore was not alone in being frustrated with the widespread use of shotcreting. Lawmaker Tanya Chan  said she was upset by two patches of shotcreted slope near the top of Old Peak Road. '[The shotcrete] was even painted green,' she said. 'What's the point of this disguise?'  
But a spokesman for the Development Bureau  said that it was government policy to make man-made slopes look as natural as possible.  
The environmental concern group's chairwoman, Vivian Leung Tai Yuet-kam,  cited an example in Pik Shan Path in Lung Fu Shan  where shotcrete had been sprayed over not only a slope, but also tree roots and trunks. 'We  complained to the Water Supplies Department, and the shotcrete on the trees has now been removed,' she said. 
Lawmaker Ms Chan said that Hong Kong was prone to landslides, so the authorities took extra precautions at the expense of aesthetics and conservation considerations. 
The Development Bureau spokesman said shotcreting was used only as a last resort to stabilise slopes, and for emergency repairs.  
'Shotcreting will be proposed on slope safety grounds only in instances where, due to the over-steep nature of the slope, other alternative techniques have been found not practical or inadequate,' he said. 




Environmentalists fume after Peak slope is concreted over