Green groups call for rejection of San Tin impact report
Green groups have urged a government advisory council to reject an environmental impact assessment report for a planned technology hub near the border with the mainland, arguing the study contains inaccurate information and may be subject to legal challenges.
Their last-ditch appeal over the assessment for the San Tin Technopole project in Yuen Long yesterday came ahead of next week’s meeting of the Advisory Council on the Environment. Council members will consider on Monday whether the environment minister should accept the report.
Chan Hall-sion, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace, one of 10 concern groups calling on the council to reject the report, said the study was so flawed it was essentially useless.
“If we were to discuss whether a particular development scheme should continue or how it could be done better, it would have to be based on accurate and scientific information, so we can have a meaningful debate, but we cannot do this today with this report,” Chan said. “This report is so bad that we cannot even have the most basic discussion on the San Tin Technopole.”
The project calls for turning more than 600 hectares near the border into a technology hub. About half of the land will be used to develop innovation and technology industries, while the rest will become a new town centre, yielding up to 54,000 flats.
But Conservancy Association campaign officer Kristy Chow Oi-chuen said it was problematic for the government to proceed given the assessment was based on the original proposed 320-hectare size of the project.
The advocacy groups claimed the report violated several
statutory requirements and guidelines, including one that asked for a new assessment summary if amendments were made that “fundamentally” changed the scope of the areas under review.
Chow noted the government had previously redone environmental reports after changes were made to development plans, but it had decided against doing so this time.
“All these various examples show that it is not impossible for the government to redo their environmental impact assessment, it is that they decided not to do it,” she said.
The advocacy groups also said the environmental report contained inaccurate or missing information, including the misidentification of some bird species living in the area.
Wong Suet-mei, a senior conservation officer at the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society, pointed out that the authorities had mislabelled a long-toed stint as a little stint, among other mistakes. Detailed information on certain topics was also missing in the report, she said.
Authorities only provided some of the information they requested during the consultation session for the assessment, she added. For example, the government had yet to supply the raw data it used for some calculations and how it intended to manage the project’s wetlands.
“Even if the Civil Engineering and Development Department really provides some very detailed information at the meeting next week, the public can no longer provide their opinions on this potentially very detailed document,” she said.
“The department will have, at some level, perfectly avoided any public monitoring.”
Greenpeace’s Chan warned that if the advisory committee approved the report, it would open the project to the risk of a judicial review, similar to what happened during the plan to convert parts of the Fanling golf course into public housing.
“The Advisory Council on the Environment is the last line of defence,” Wong said. “They are able to be the final check against a project that can lead to ecological loss or effects like the San Tin Technopole.”
She called on the council to demand the information they requested, and reject or at least attach conditions to the acceptance of the study.
The report, released in February, had suggested that the San Tin plan would mean the loss of 89 hectares of wetland and about 1.7 hectares of woodland, with 56,000 trees either cut down or transplanted.
A Development Bureau spokesperson said the assessment had been done strictly in accordance with the relevant ordinances and technical memorandum, adding that the area of assessment included the latest scope of the entire project.
The Environmental Protection Department spokesman said the assessment procedure was a “professional, objective and open” system. He noted that the department believed that the original assessment summary could cover the new development scope of the San Tin Technopole and the possible environmental impact of the new land use.