Protection racket: harbour under fire

The goverment is attacking the Protection of Harbour Ordinance yet again: and this time they'll get it done...

The Protection of Harbour Ordinance (PHO) is under attack and, with the patriotic LegCo and District Council in place, the legislation will likely breeze through.

I wrote about this in 2021 and 2022. Alas, there will be no proper transitjam.com reporting in 2024 while I’m on police bail, and there’s no real civil society left to give the environment’s side anyway, other than Golf Club lawyers /s.

But, briefly, here's why this should be opposed.

The government now gives the impression all they want to do is bring gifts to the Hong Kong people.

Who would stand against a little watersport pier here and there? A fancy new boardwalk, free of pesky judicial reviews? Sea walls for climate change mitigation?

If you only read the first page of the brief you’d be rooting for them to dissolve PHO as fast as they can raise their hands.

But the dangerous part is the "temporary reclamation".

Developers may reclaim land up to three hectares (a sixth of Victoria Park, four soccer pitches) for up to seven years. And extensions seem easy to obtain: just ask the Financial Secretary (FS), who is the one in charge and who’ll give you another year, few questions asked.

The issue is, many developers' harbourfront plans are stymied under PHO not because their completed buildings would infringe on the harbour but because the construction would. They can't build decks out into the harbour to support the construction work, or fill the foreshore to provide a solid base for construction activities.

So they'll now get a "temporary" licence for seven+ years to fill in the harbour and turn it into a building site. And when the project finishes, they’ll clean it up, remove most of the garbage and … another will start next door. Victoria Harbour will be blighted for decades, perhaps forevermore.

In addition, the government proposes to change the meaning of “protection” and “sea-bed or foreshore” such that structures such as floating pontoons or cantilever structures, which “merely puts […] shadow on the harbour”, will not constitute “reclamation” and will not be caught by the amended law.

The proposed bill says there are safeguards in place.

“In the unlikely event of non-compliance with certain conditions or requirements, FS may suspend or revoke the exemption”.

Right.

We all know about the massive China Concrete plant which has been running and polluting for years despite the government revoking its licence and ordering it to close.

Or how about the city’s flagship Third Runway project, which saw 17 workers killed or seriously maimed, corruption cases out the wazoo and untold numbers of unpaid workers protesting weekly: 12th century European cathedrals were built safer and cleaner.

Why would we expect projects under the revised PHO to be any different to the usual Hong Kong standard?

In truth, the government has no real power once developers begin pounding the foreshore and we should hold in contempt any soothing snaketalk on any supervision, monitoring or enforcement.

The only thing we can do is hit the phones and let the sitting lawmakers know we’ll be watching very closely.

LegCo contact directory here: https://www.legco.gov.hk/en/members/legco-members/members-contact-directory.html

And the LegCo brief here: https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr2024/english/brief/devbplcr11084_20241205-e.pdf

Peace all!

James

PS Please do follow me on Twitter/X and BlueSky: no criticisms of X (one man’s toxic is another’s spicy) but a decent HK community is growing on BlueSky!