Hong Kong lawmakers have expressed their support for a proposal that would allow the authorities to shut down illegal concrete plants.
At the legislature’s panel for the environment on Monday, legislators said they supported a new mechanism that would allow environmental authorities to cut off the water and power supply to noncompliant concrete plants.
However, they advised the government to be careful when drafting the amendment to avoid impeding legitimate firms’ operations.
Environmental authorities are seeking to introduce a closure notice mechanism as an “effective legal means” to close down unlicensed concrete batching plants.
Non-compliance
The Environmental Protection Department (EPD) had found that certain operators remained in operation even after they were refused licence renewals, the EPD and the Environment and Ecology Bureau said in a submission to the legislature’s environmental affairs panel.
That was despite the existence of a licensing regime that regulated cement works alongside other applications including incinerators and electricity, chemical incineration, and gas works.
Some remained in operation by filing judicial reviews after their appeals over the refusals were dismissed by the government-appointed Air Pollution Control Appeal Board.
Under the proposed mechanism, the department will be empowered to issue a statutory closure notice to close down the premises with immediate effect, “making the directors and the managing [staff] of the body corporate involved to bear the corresponding legal liabilities,” the bureau’s submission said.
“We believe that air pollution caused by knowingly conducting illegal unlicensed [works] shall be dealt with through the introduction of a closure notification mechanism and prompt, efficient enforcement actions to stop such operation at once,” the bureau added.
Legislator and veteran engineer Lo Wai-kwok on Monday said he supported the amendment, saying it “made sense” to have a closure mechanism. But he asked the government to heed the industry’s concerns, saying “They don’t want the regulation to be overkill, to regulate legitimate cement works to the point that we stifle them.
Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan said he understood the importance of concrete plants, adding that the EEB was in talks with the Development Bureau to relocate a non-compliant plant in Yau Tong elsewhere.
Lawmaker and surveyer Tony Tse said he supported a streamlining procedure proposed by the EEB, saying that it would allow cement works that complied with the law to continue to support infrastructure projects.
“I hope the EEB can be more proactive so that law-abiding operators can have an easier time,” he said.
Shut down
On the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism, the environment chief said the closure notice would give the EPD the power to cut the water and electricity supply to a plant, effectively rendering it inoperative.
The government had also proposed extending the regulations to cover cement works conducted at sea.
In light of operators offloading concrete onto “mobile storage containers” such that their storage capacity fell under the threshold of 50 tonnes, thus dodging regulation under the ordinance, the bureau also proposed revising “total silo capacity” to “total storage capacity” in the ordinance to more accurately gauge the amount of cement an operator could handle.
Addressing lawmaker Doreen Kong’s concerns regarding operators’ right to file appeals and the need for a “reasonable and fair” amendment, the environment chief said that the the closure notices would target operators that continued to run concrete plants even after their appeals had been dismissed.
He cited the case of an operator that, despite an earlier rejection, had tried to “deliberately” stall legal proceedings by changing lawyers and claiming they were sick. “With the closure notice mechanism, we can prevent the deliberate delaying of legal proceedings by operators.”
The government will consult the Advisory Council on the Environment this month. It intends to propose the amendment bill to the Legislative Council in November 2024, with the goal of implementing the new control measures in early 2025.
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