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Hong Kong environmental issues
Hong KongHealth & Environment

Green groups and academics outraged over new housing project near Hong Kong Wetland Park, calling it a ‘bad precedent’

  • Construction to begin on 19 residential towers in Fung Lok Wai
  • Protected buffer area is a wintering site for black-faced spoonbills

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High rise apartments above Hong Kong Wetland Park. The Buildings Department has approved 19 new residential towers in Fung Lok Wai. Photo: Alamy
Tony Cheung

Academics and environmental groups have urged the government to review its wetland conservation policy after the Buildings Department approved another housing project on the edge of Hong Kong Wetland Park.

The department revealed last month that it had approved the building plans of Mutual Luck Investment, a subsidiary of property giant Cheung Kong, to build 19 residential towers with nearly 2,000 total flats in Fung Lok Wai, one of the last remaining wetland areas to the east of the nature park.

Construction of the project is set to begin after the developer pays the government a land premium.

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The Mutual Luck project would be the second major residential development to be built near the Tin Shui Wai conservation and education park in recent years.

Since 2017, developer Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP) has been in the process of building 76 housing towers on two sites to the west of the wetland park. The buildings are on both two sides of the park’s main entrance on Wetland Park Road.

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The park, opened to the public in 2006, was intended to be a mitigation eco-reserve to make up for the wetlands that were lost when Tin Shui Wai New Town was developed in the 1990s.

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