SCMP
Cheung Chi-fai
Environment officials intend to track polluting taxis and cars using remote-sensing street-level technology.
The plan – which aims to cut ozone and nitrogen filth – is being drafted by the Environmental Protection Department. The technology has been around for years, but officials are now taking a serious look at it as the nature of air pollution changes.
Since the regional …
SCMP
Albert Lai
The ruling on the delta bridge should herald a better approach to environmental protection for future projects
Last week, the High Court ruled that the environmental impact assessment of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge project did not comply with the law. Hence, the decision of the director of environmental protection to approve bridge works was quashed. This was the result of …
SCMP
Howard Winn
As the government continues to twiddle its thumbs over the noxious fumes that are spewed out by mainly buses and trucks, other organisations are thankfully taking a less relaxed view. Hung Wing-tat, an associate professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, is overseeing a pilot project to examine the health effects of air pollution in children. It is part of “The Clean Air Init …
SCMP
Christine Loh
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge is jinxed. The bridge is one of the government’s key infrastructure projects costing over HK$80 billion and work was to begin last year. If it hadn’t been for an elderly litigant from Tung Chung with diabetes and a heart condition pursuing a judicial review of the project on environmental grounds, construction would be racing ahead by now.
The …
SCMP
Cheung Chi-fai
The year’s first quarter has been unusually bright and dry and scientists are looking into the possibility that this is why the air was also unusually dirty.
This spring has been one of the most polluted on record, especially on the roadside.
The air pollution index was at a very high level for about a third of the January-March period, almost three times longer than during …
For Immediate Release
CLEAN AIR AUCTION CLEANS UP!
(4 April 2011, Hong Kong) Today’s fundraising auction, conducted by Sotheby’s at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center to benefit Hong Kong’s #1 clean air NGO and charity, Clean Air Network, was a resounding success, with the auction raising HK$2.2 million from the sale of 42 lots of environmentally themed art.
The auction greatly focal …
SCMP
Ada Lee
Heavy trucks on congested roads add to environmental problem, green group finds
A Friends of the Earth study has found that people in poor areas of Hong Kong are breathing the worst air, and that Sham Shui Po is the most polluted of all.
“The green group analysed the Environmental Protection Bureau’s general station readings over 13 months from January last year.”
“It found Sham S …
SCMP
Howard Winn
If the government was so eager to throw money away in its budget turnaround – a desperate attempt to appease the public – why didn’t it spend the HK$36 billion on something that would be popular, beneficial to health and enhance Hong Kong’s international standing?
In other words, why not reduce roadside pollution? It is roadside pollution which accounts for most of the pollution …
SCMP
Cheung Chi-fai and Maggie Tam
A planned incinerator to be built on a remote island near south Lantau would bring more pollution to north Lantau, the airport and Kwai Tsing if the waste burning plant is built on Shek Kwu Chau, rather than in Tuen Mun, the original expected location.
“About 2,900 tonnes of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide and 217 tonnes of respirable suspended particle …
For Immediate Release
Today, Hong Kong University held a press conference to deliver a damning indictment of the government’s proposed new air quality objective. (The original press release is attached.) Far from protecting our health, these new “protective” guidelines, if fully exploited, would permit even higher levels of sulphur dioxide (SO2) than present and lead to, possibly, great harmer to …