Hongkongers should cut their water consumption, experts say
The amount of drinking water from Guangdong is likely to be reduced in the near future. Activists say that Hongkongers should start efforts to cut consumption now, writes Bernice Chan
It's hard for Hong Kong residents to imagine having to queue for our household supply of water every few days simply because there isn't enough to go round.
But that was the life in the city for an entire year when southern China was hit by severe drought between 1963 and 1964. It was the worst period in Hong Kong's water history, when the taps were turned on for just four hours every four days.
"I remember, every morning, I used water in a plastic container to wash my face and then that water was used to wash vegetables before using it to flush the toilet," Frederick Lee Yok-shiu, an associate professor of geography at the University of Hong Kong, says of his experience with water rationing, which continued into the early 1970s.
Those days have long gone thanks to the steady supply of water piped in from the Dongjiang, a river in Guangdong province, which supplies 70 to 80 per cent of Hong Kong's requirements.
But the river's waters are shared by some 40 million people in the eastern Pearl River Delta region. As communities north of Lo Wu grow thirstier, the increased demand will inevitably affect Hong Kong's supply from the Dongjiang - even we are paying for it.