Hong Kong green groups call for rejection of impact assessment report for border tech hub project
- Conservation groups say report on environmental impact of San Tin Technopole project contains inaccurate information and may be subject to legal challenges
- Last-ditch appeal comes ahead of Monday meeting by Advisory Council on the Environment, which will consider whether authorities should accept report
Hong Kong green groups have urged a government advisory council to reject an environmental impact assessment report for a planned technology hub near the border with mainland China, arguing the study contains inaccurate information and may be subject to legal challenges.
Their last-ditch appeal over the assessment for the San Tin Technopole project in Yuen Long on Wednesday came ahead of next week’s meeting of the Advisory Council on the Environment. Council members will consider on Monday whether the environment minister should accept the report.
While the government said it stood by the assessment, Chan Hall-sion, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace, one of 10 concern groups calling on the council to reject the report, said the study was so flawed it was essentially useless.
“If we were to discuss whether a particular development scheme should continue or how it could be done better, it would have to be based on accurate and scientific information, so we can have a meaningful debate, but we cannot do this today with this report,” Chan said. “This report is so bad that we cannot even have the most basic discussion on the San Tin Technopole.”
The project calls for turning over 600 hectares (1,483 acres) near the city’s border into a technology hub. About half of the land will be used to develop innovation and technology industries, while the rest will become a new town centre, yielding up to 54,000 flats.
But Conservancy Association campaign officer Kristy Chow Oi-chuen said it was problematic for the government to proceed given the assessment was based on the original proposed 320-hectare size of the project.
