Special Meeting of LegCo EA Panel on 26 October 1998

SSDS EIA - Land Implications on the Construction of
Sewage Treatment Works in Kwun Tong And Tseung Kwan O

At the meeting on 26 October 1998, during discussion of the results of the first phase of the Strategic Sewage Disposal Scheme Environmental Impact Assessment (SSDS EIA) Study, Members of the Panel queried on the possibility of a semi-distributed sewage treatment system and providing sewage treatment works at Kwun Tong and Tseung Kwan O. The Administration agreed to provide further information on the two sites. The following paragraphs provide the necessary information.

2. The sites of the Kwun Tong and Tseung Kwan O STWs are shown in Annexes 1 and 2, respectively. The land already reserved for the sewage treatment facilities at Kwun Tong is about 2.5 ha in size. The planned population served by such facilities in 2016 will be 993,000 with a sewage flow of around 380,000 m3/day. On the other hand, about 35 ha of land would be needed to provide a secondary treament works (STW) and the necessary buffer zone for this flow. Clearly, there is not enough space to provide such facilities in this area. The only means to provide sufficient space would be by reclamation.

3. The current planned population for Tseung Kwan O in 2016 is 530,000 with a sewage flow of 175,000 m3/day. Again, about 17 ha of land would be needed for a STW and the required buffer zone. However, the land available at Tseung Kwan O is only 9 ha. If the STW is to be built, land adjacent to this plant, which has been allocated for building the MTR depot with a massive residential development on top, would have to be reserved for building the STW. Moreover, a large STW there would no doubt affect the nearby residential area in the long term.

4. There is clearly insufficient land at either of these sites for them to be seriously considered as locations for biological treatment works.

Environmental Protection Department
January 1999