Letters | Use of plastic bags to fill holes on Hong Kong beach a travesty
Readers discuss contractors’ actions on a Lantau beach, and a reclamation project in Tseung Kwan O
The incinerator at Shek Kwu Chau is already a blot on the seascape as viewed from South Lantau; many objected to this project and the technology used. Now the contractors connecting the incinerator to power on Lantau are once again digging up a stretch of Upper Cheung Sha Beach.
What is apparent is that after the first excavation two to three years ago, the contractors filled in the large hole with plastic woven sacks containing sand. These sacks are now being dug out of that hole and are torn and strewn across tonnes of excavated sand from the hole.
Alongside this mound of waste are large industrial bags of clean sand that are intended to be used for covering the hole once it has been refilled with all the ripped plastic sacks and sand. There appears to be no intention of removing all the sacks from the sand before refilling the hole.
The Environmental Protection Department and Leisure and Cultural Services Department are seemingly powerless to do anything.
Already last year after a high strong tide the initially buried bags were exposed on the surface of the beach; it is only now evident what the full extent of the use of the bags has been. This is eco-vandalism of the highest degree on what has to date been one of Hong Kong’s finest white-sand beaches.