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Press
Releases - 1997 (July - December)
Signing
of Tseung Kwan O Landfills Restoration Contract
The Environmental
Protection Department(EPD) today (Tuesday) signed a contract
to restore two old landfills in Tseung Kwan O covering a total
area of 110 hectares.
Under
the contract, the contractor is required to design, construct
and manage the restoration facilities at the sites for up
to 30 years until the land has been de-contaminated and is
ready for normal development.
The land
can be put into temporary recreational uses such as for football
field and golf driving range after restoration facilities
are in place.
The contract
is awarded to Swire BFI Waste Services Limited (SBFI), which
is a company jointly owned by Swire Pacific Limited and Browning-Ferris
Industries, Inc.
The capital
cost is $382.3 million and an average of about $12.1 million
will be paid to the contractor each year for operating and
maintaining the restoration facilities.
Under
the landfill restoration programme, this is the third contract
after the Shuen Wan and Urban Landfills. Tender for the fourth
contract for old landfills in Northwest New Territories and
Gin Drinker Bay will also be called in the near future.
Speaking
after the contract signing ceremony, the Assistant Director
of Environmental Protection (Waste Facilities), Mr Benny Wong
said the Tseung Kwan O landfills needed to be cleaned up as
soon as possible so that they would not cause any pollution
problems to the existing and future industrial and residential
development in the vicinity.
"The restoration
works include the construction of impermeable capping, landfill
gas extraction and flaring systems to burn off the extracted
landfill gas at a high temperature, wastewater extraction
and treatment system to treat the extracted wastewater to
the required standard before discharging into public sewer."
Given
the right conditions, he said, landfill gas might be utilized
either in the form of an lternative fuel or energy for generating
electricity.
"As a
start, the restoration contractor is required to utilize the
extracted landfill gas as a fuel to generate sufficient electricity
to power the on-site facilities."
Mr Wong
pointed out that the old landfills had served Hong Kong over
the past 30 years, but all landfills, old and new ones alike,
were finite resources and had to be conserved and used sensibly.
"At present,
large quantities of waste are generated every day and disposed
of at the three strategic landfills. If the quantities of
waste are not reduced, all the landfills in Hong Kong will
be filled up by 2012," he said.
To address
the problem of increasing waste generation, he said a draft
Waste Reduction Plan was formulated and had been issued for
public consultation.
" We have
already received a lot of valuable comments on the draft plan
and hope to receive more in the remaining consultation period
which will end on August 30 (Saturday), 1997," Mr Wong said.
Comments
should be sent to the Planning, Environment and Lands Bureau,
ninth floor, Murray Building, Garden Road, Hong Kong, or via
the E-mail address:
waste.reduction@pelb.wpelb.gov.hk
End/Tuesday,
August 19, 1997
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