BACKGROUND
History of SENT Landfill

SENT Landfill is located on the western edge of Clear Water Bay Peninsular in the south-eastern corner of the New Territories. The site covers an area of about 100 ha, half of which has been reclaimed from Shek Biu Wan (Junk Bay). To the north of the site lies the restored TKO Stage II/III Landfill; to the east lies Clear Water Bay Country Park; to the west lies land reclaimed as industrial estate and to the south is the reclamation (TKO Area 137) intended for industrial uses. The landfilling operation commenced in 1994, which accepts municipal solid waste, construction waste and special waste.

Here are a few facts and figures about the current SENT Landfill:

It is strategically located in close proximity to the main urban areas
Every day it receives about 6,200 tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW), construction waste and special waste
It is the most highly used waste disposal facility in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR)
It is predicted that its capacity will be exhausted by around 2012

The need for SENT Landfill Extension

There are three existing landfills in Hong Kong:
the North East New Territories Landfill (NENT)
the South East New Territories Landfill (SENT)
the West New Territories Landfill (WENT)

Hong Kong is facing an imminent waste problem as the existing landfills will be filled up in the next decade. In December 2005, the Government published “A Policy Framework for the Management of Municipal Solid Waste (2005-2014)”. This document sets out a ten-year (2005-2014) timetable for embracing the concepts of sustainable waste management, which adopts the three-tired waste hierarchy with avoidance and minimization as the top priorities, followed by reuse, recovery and recycling and with bulk waste reduction and landfill disposal at the bottom of the hierarchy.

The Government is therefore actively promoting initiatives to reduce waste generation and promote waste recycling. When comparing the waste statistics for 2006 with those of previous years, the amount of MSW disposed of at the three strategic landfills (WENT, NENT and SENT) dropped by 1% against an economic growth of 6.8% in 2006. Equally encouraging is the increase in the recovery rate of domestic waste from 16% in 2005 to 20% in 2006. At the same time, the overall recovery of MSW has also increased from 43% in 2005 (2.59 million tonnes) to 45% in 2006 (2.84 million tonnes), three years ahead of the target stated in the Policy Framework. There are however areas of concern. Even though the amount of MSW landfilled was reduced by 1% in 2006, there is still a long way to go in achieving the Policy Framework’s target of reducing the total MSW landfilled to less than 25%. In addition, despite EPD’s efforts in waste reduction and recovery, the amount of MSW generated remains on an increasing trend. This is likely to be the result of growth in commercial, industrial and tourism-related activities in 2006 which has led to an increase of about 4% in commercial and industrial waste generation. Therefore, despite the progress achieved for source separation and waste recycling, it is important to press ahead with the other initiatives in the Policy Framework such as Producer Responsibility Schemes (PRSs), MSW charging, integrated waste management facilities (IWMF) and landfill extensions.

At the same time, the Government is also looking into building modern large scale integrated waste management facilities that would employ thermal treatment as a core technology as it is clearly not sustainable to continue to rely on landfilling alone for the disposal of untreated MSW. The integrated waste management facilities are planned to be commissioned in the mid 2010s, assuming that good progress is made. As mentioned in the Policy Framework, landfills will still be required as the final repositories for non-recyclable waste, inert waste and waste residues after treatment. It has been estimated that the demand for landfill space from 2006 to 2025 is around 200 million tonnes, while the remaining landfill capacity, at the end of 2004 was 90 million tonnes. The provision of sufficient landfill space by extending the capacity of the three existing landfills is an important and integral part of the waste management strategy in Hong Kong and is necessary to meet the shortfall of landfill capacity. Indeed, the Policy Framework recommended that commissioning of these extensions will be required in the early 2010s to mid-2010s.

In addition to the need for landfill capacity on a territory-wide basis, there is a need to meet the regional demand for waste disposal outlets. The three landfills are at strategic locations in Hong Kong and the extension of all three is necessary to maintain the overall waste disposal plan which is based on bulk waste transfer to avoid excessive number of waste collection vehicles travelling in the urban areas ⁽¹⁾. Due to its close proximity to the urban areas, the SENT Landfill is the most highly used waste disposal facility amongst the three landfills, particularly by private waste collectors for commercial, industrial as well as construction wastes. It receives about 6,200 tonnes of municipal, construction and special wastes every day. If the SENT Landfill is closed, waste will have to be diverted to the NENT and WENT Landfills. This will require vehicles collecting waste from the catchments of the SENT Landfill to travel an additional hundred thousand kilometres per day in total through the built-up areas to the remotely located NENT and WENT Landfills, thus resulting in additional environmental impacts such as increased traffic movements, vehicular emissions and noise impacts on many more sensitive receivers en-route. To reduce these impacts, we would need a succession plan by developing new waste transfer and/or handling facilities in the south-east region of the territory, such as new handling facility for construction waste (ie the Construction Waste Handling Facility (CWHF)) and refuse transfer station for MSW (ie the South East Kowloon Transfer Station (SEKTS)). As the planning (including the site search), feasibility study, statutory environmental impact assessment process, tendering and contract arrangement, detailed design, construction and commissioning of these facilities would take equally long time as the landfill extension scheme, it further strengthens the importance of maximising the capacity of Extension where feasible in order to minimize those impacts as far as we could manage.

Projecting the time at which these new facilities will be available is very uncertain as the site for the CWHF will unlikely be available in the early 2010s and the site selection for the SEKTS has not yet been started. It will be a long planning and public consultation process to secure suitable waterfront sites at the Tseung Kwan O and South East Kowloon areas which are acceptable to the public for the development of these waste transfer/handlling facilities, but without compromising the overall planning and development of these two areas. In addition, the funding for developing these facilities has not been secured. Under an optimistic set of conditions to form a target programme at the present stage, they could possibly be in place by 2017. With SENT expected to be full by 2012, at least six years of additional void space is necessary. It is important to extend the lifespan of the SENT Landfill so that the Government can have time to plan and develop these new waste handling facilities.



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(1) According to the White Paper “Pollution in Hong Kong – A Time to Act” issued on 5 June 1989 and the subsequent waste disposal strategy under the Waste Disposal Plan approved by the Governor in Council on 12 December 1989, there should be three new landfills in Hong Kong distributed on a regional basis for the following reasons:
	the daily quantity of MSW could not be handled by one or two landfills simply because of the strain that would be placed on the surrounding road network and on the landfill sites themselves;
	the increases in MSW were projected for the western and north-eastern New Territories and provision of disposal facility in each of these areas would help reduce transportation costs; and
	there would continue to be a need for a final disposal facility in reasonable proximity to Hong Kong Island in order to contain the transportation cost for waste arising from urban areas.

The existing 3 strategic landfills were therefore located at the western, north-eastern and south-eastern New Territories regions within the territory in the absence of other alternative site available in Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.