Hong Kong Should Be Ashamed

By HILARY ROXE Hong Kong

China's relatively primitive environmental awareness is understandable: as 1.2 billion people rush headlong toward prosperity, ecological concerns can seem a luxury. But what excuse is there in Hong Kong, the territory on the tip of the mainland that's home to a mere 6.8 million, comparatively wealthy people?

Hong Kong began to grow up, in stormy, adolescent spurts, in the middle of this century. Flooded by refugees from the mainland at the end of World War II, the British colony responded with one of the world's most ambitious efforts at rapid urbanization. To handle the huge waves of humanity--the population bulged by 1.3 million people between 1945 and 1949 alone--buildings and industries, roads and rail lines erupted from the rocky landscape. Subsequent influxes in the 1960s and a shift from farming to industry added to the strain. Today, residents in the territory are plagued by filthy air and foul water.

How did things get so nasty? Blame a distant colonial government, war-weary immigrants and businesses vying to establish an Asian foothold with few incentives to protect a city that had just started to thrive.

The legacy is appalling, and increasingly visible. Seventy percent of local sewage is dumped, virtually untreated, into Victoria Harbour. "Red tide" algae hit the territory's shores repeatedly last year, contaminating sea populations and leaving thousands of dead fish on the beaches. Photochemical smog now routinely drapes the hills of the once Barren Rock. More than 18,000 taxis traverse the city exhaling black clouds of diesel smoke. Since 1991, the number of days a year when visibility is less than 8 km has doubled, a phenomenon that now occurs 10% of the time. "If we carry on as we have in the past," says Kim Salkeld, deputy secretary for the environment in the Planning, Environment and Lands Bureau, "everyone will be choking on the pollution."

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