Suggestion to move Kwai Tsing facility ignores key points
Your correspondent’s suggestion that the Kwai Tsing Container Terminals be moved to Kau Yi Chau (“White elephant? Here’s how to help Hong Kong’s Kau Yi Chau project take flight”, March 25) ignores both history and the deed of restrictive covenant placed on the environs of extensions of Hongkong International Theme Parks.
In addition to the retention of the natural landscape and height limits on developments in its immediate vicinity, the deed guarantees no reclamation and a prohibited anchorage area (except for authorised vessels) in waters to the south of Hong Kong Disneyland.
The areas marked for four of the terminals survive as the rectangular outlines around the Kau Yi Chau islands on the existing North-East Lantau outline zoning plan S/I-NEL/12. Also shown on the plan are the Penny’s Bay Highway and its connection to the North Lantau Highway, for use by container lorries, and reclamation at Yam O/Sunny Bay at one time intended for a river trade terminal.
The latter area may now see the proposed Hong Kong Island West to Hung Shui Kiu Rail Link, which passes through Kau Yi Chau islands, running through it. The rail link accords with your correspondent’s emphasis on the “importance of transport links” and the imperative in the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area “to build a rapid transport network” such that travel times among major cities in the bay area are reduced “to one hour or less”.
Not shown on the outline zoning plan is a proposed (submarine) road from Kau Yi Chau to Hong Kong Island. In 1994, that road was intended to land on a reclaimed area off Green Island, the construction of which was expected to be “more difficult than most reclamations” in Hong Kong.
In 2005, the government confirmed the proposed reclamation off Green Island had been “deleted” and the relevant outline zoning plans amended accordingly. It also said that, apart from three projects under way, there would be “no more reclamation within the harbour”. For the “remaining reclamation projects”, the government “pledged to abide by” the Protection of the Harbour Ordinance and “to comply with the ‘overriding public need’ test stipulated by the Court of Final Appeal in January 2004”.
Moreover, a 2017 preliminary engineering feasibility study said construction of the Green Island Link – now reconfigured as the “Hong Kong Island West – Northeast Lantau Link” – required temporary and possibly permanent reclamation within Victoria Harbour.
R. Coates, Sham Shui Po