River of Life

It was a chain of simple coincidences which set about the miracle transformation of the Kai Tak Nullah from a stinky, dirty ditch into what now looks like a fresh and clean river. Not so long ago it was a concrete sewage channel running across Diamond Hill all the way down to San Po Kong and the old Kai Tak airport in Kowloon. It wasn’t supposed to be this way—the nullah was originally designed to allow rainwater to flow back into the harbor to prevent flooding. But as industry and housing boomed in the 1960s and 70s, rainwater was joined by sewage and wastewater, turning the nullah black, disgusting and smelly.

Local residents hated it (although many were to blame for the pollution) and passersby walked at the speed of light to avoid the rancid stench. Many other nullahs in the city have been covered up and at one point this was suggested as a way of improving the living environment in San Po Kong.

But if you take a walk past the nullah today, or simply have a look at the pictures on this page, you will hardly believe your eyes. In dramatic contrast to its disgusting past, the nullah now looks clean, is far less smelly and there are even fish swimming around in the water. Residents no longer avoid the area and some actually wander down to the water’s edge to have a look at what’s beneath the surface. It’s as if the residents of San Po Kong have suddenly gained a river from out of nowhere.

This didn’t happen because of some government master plan, like in the case of Seoul’s Chonggyechon River, an underground sewer that the Korean government resurfaced, cleaned and turned into a river as part of an ambitious attempt to go green. The Hong Kong government did nothing as bold as this. Everything happened because of a series of coincidences.

In the late 90s, the Drainage Services Department redirected the filtered wastewater from Sha Tin to the Kai Tak Nullah because the geography of the area made it difficult for the water to flow out to Tolo Harbor. This new source of water flowing into the Kai Tak Nullah diluted the original dirty water and completely transformed it. Within no time at all it was less stinky and the waters ran clear.

Now more than 20 species of fish can be found in the nullah and every evening, white egrets fly to this new unlikely fishing spot to catch their supper. All of a sudden there is a healthy eco-system emerging from one of the filthiest spots in the city.

And this has given people ideas—what if the nullah becomes a river, or more specifically, what if it reclaims its status as the Long Jin River, which it was about 150 years ago? One of these thinkers is former legislator Chan Yuen-han who recently retired from her political career having left Legco last year. Now she wants to spend more time focusing on projects like the Kai Tak Nullah development which she has spent more than a decade working on. Despite her commitment to the project, Chan has not always been a big fan of the nullah-cum-river—at first she wanted to cement it. “The public opinion was leaning towards covering the nullah to widen the road back then,” she remembers. “Sealing it seemed to be more feasible than any other option.” But then another coincidence occurred. In 2005, after the government decided to seal the 16 nullahs in Hong Kong, it turned out that they didn’t actually have a big enough budget that year. They delayed the project but nothing ever happened and this allowed Kai Tak Nullah to be revitalized into what we see today in San Po Kong.