Shocking blank cheque on mainland rubble disposal exposes artifical island subterfuge
An absolutely staggering confession from Development Secretary Bernadette Linn in LegCo yesterday: the government apparently has no clue how much Hong Kong spends on sending construction waste to the mainland for disposal.
Construction waste has four channels in Hong Kong: non-reusable waste (about a third of all construction waste), can be dumped illegally (the government claims this is coming down to around 1,000 tonnes a year); or sent to landfill (1.6 MILLION tonnes in 2023).
But the bulk of our construction waste – inert rubble and such – can be re-used and is either sent to the “public fill” reservoir for later reclamation use; or, when these reservoirs are full, to the mainland for (costly) disposal (or more likely for selling back to Hong Kong once we start filling in the ocean to build artificial islands).
The fees for handling this overflow waste are hefty, at least “hundreds of millions of dollars” according to lawmaker Tony Tse who raised the issue in LegCo yesterday.
Public fill storage reached a “record high” in March this year, Tse says, with two major reclamation projects (the Third Runway and Tung Chung reclamations) now completed and no longer using the old rubble. As such, Tse is concerned the public fill will remain full, particularly if the Kau Yi Chai artificial island reclamation is delayed, and Hong Kong’s mainland disposal bill will soar1.
So Tse asked the government how much we are actually spending on sending reclamation material to the mainland, to which Linn said… the $1.1 billion contracts were too opaque for such a breakdown.
“As the supply of public fill […] and the delivery of surplus public fill to the Mainland are both undertaken by a single contractor, there is no cost breakdown of individual operations in the contract,” she said yesterday in response to Tse’s question.
Unbelievable, even for a government which likes to hide everything2.
In the same breath, Linn said it was too difficult to forecast future construction waste streams.
“[S]ince the amount of construction waste […] is subject to the number of public and private construction works […], as well as the effect of business cycle, it is therefore difficult to provide an accurate forecast of the future trend,” she told LegCo (my (incredulous) emphasis).
Not even going to have a guess? Back of the envelope? Isn’t forecasting and planning part of the Development Bureau’s job?
Linn’s responses in LegCo, to valid questions from a senior lawmaker, are entirely unacceptable: if she’s telling the truth, and the government is truly clueless about how much we are spending on construction waste disposal fees to the mainland and how much waste we might generate in the coming years, and how much that disposal might cost, then everyone involved needs to be fired.
But it’s more likely the obfuscation comes less from iffy mainland disposal fees and more from the government’s unwillingness to come out with a hard decision on the artificial islands.
If they publish any sort of accurate construction waste or reclamation forecast, they’ll reveal their plans (whether going ahead or not) and their timeline.
Like a New Territories thief reaching slowly into the window from a bamboo scaffold, this government seems to prefer inching along towards controversial goals rather than coming out and owning them.
DevB can prove me wrong by sharpening its pencils and revealing some numbers: otherwise, the prevailing theory is that, by hiding the rubble accounts from public view, Linn’s simply signalled what most of us suspect: that the artifical islands are going ahead, fast, with as little public consultation as possible.
Tse’s not using this as a reason for push ahead with Lantau: he also this week said the island project is not necessary from a housing supply point of view.
Try finding the name of the contractor on the DevB or CEDD websites… since pesky questions on various contracts from this and other journalists some time in 2020-21, DevB deleted ALL historic contract data and now only prints the latest six months tender results.